


A Bird in the Hand

by Grimmseye



Series: he's caught between the moon and the sun [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Amnesiac Mollymauk Tealeaf, Anal Sex, Chapters with graphic sex are quarantined from the rest of the fic, Essek had one good social interaction and thinks he's ready to have a roommate, Essek's ex-catholic tendencies, Eventual Romance, Graphic Violence, M/M, Multi, Nonsexual Nudity, Other, Pre-Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast, Pre-Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Spoilers up to Campaign 2 Episode 108, Tags will update as chapters release, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:42:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 50,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grimmseye/pseuds/Grimmseye
Summary: There was a figure within, laid out on the ground in a startlingly casual manner. Arms pillowed his head, one leg propped up on the knee while a spaded tail swished back and forth, comfortable albeit bored. A purple tiefling was housed beyond the bars, skin littered with scars and tattoos, horns that curled about his face, long and knotted hair.“I am here to speak with you,” Essek called. He started, as he always did, with a soft voice. Something welcoming, something comforting. It never worked the way he wanted.The tiefling paused, tail stilling against the floor. Then he curled his legs against his chest and pumped them forward, using the momentum to surge up into a sitting position. With one black eye and a split lip, the smile he flashed was likely far less charming than he’d intended.-----Or: Mollymauk attempts to find the Mighty Nein. Mollymauk is arrested for breaking and entering. While the Nein are out of the country, it falls to Essek to deal with him.
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast (eventual), The Mighty Nein & Essek Thelyss
Series: he's caught between the moon and the sun [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980334
Comments: 296
Kudos: 674





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is canon-compliant as of episode 91. Beyond that, this fic is unlikely to _remain_ compliant. 
> 
> Anyway! People seemed interested in a little Essek/Molly/Caleb action. This fic may get into explicit territory in the future. If it does, such chapters and material will be kept separate from the rest of the story.
> 
> Enjoy! <3

Essek knew how to hide his nerves. They’d been pricking at his skin since the Nein left, little needles feeding just under the first layer of flesh and shifting  _ up  _ and through, again and again and again until his skin felt raw from imaginary scratches. He drifted in the perfect image of composure regardless, moving through the corridors of the Shadowspire as he would any other day, on any other job. 

The situation had been described as  _ complicated.  _ Related to the Nein, as well, hence Essek’s summoning — it seemed they were considered his wards now. That was what he wanted to believe. He had recently voiced thoughts that had always been silent, with people he knew to be observed. He himself had scryed upon the Nein, and then blurted his secrets in their presence. He, who was consecuted, who had always upheld the facade of worshipping the Luxon, now feared he had at last been caught in his lie. 

Worship was not  _ required _ . It was not law. But the Shadowhand was required to be transparent with his Queen. Deception, he knew, would not favor his position. Nor his wellbeing. 

It was a slight reassurance that they only brought him to the first level of the Dungeon of Penance. This would not hold him, and they knew as much. Few things could chain him down. 

One of the prison’s wardens met him at its entrance, a tall and broad-shoulder drow, their hair buzzed shorter even than Essek’s. “Ruasorin,” Essek greeted, voice clipped and formal. “I would appreciate some explanation as to my summons. What I was told was… frustratingly vague.”

“Apologies, Shadowhand,” they said. “We are not certain what to make of this just yet. Hopefully you will be able to illuminate the situation. If you could follow me, I will explain on the way.” 

Essek looked them over carefully. No unnecessary tension, no flicker of the eyes. He nodded and motioned for Ruasorin to lead, drifting along behind them with his arms underneath his mantle. 

“There was an attempted break-in to the house we have allocated to the Mighty Nein,” Ruasorin reported. Essek tensed for only a moment before forcing it away. “Guards standing by took note of this intruder and detained him. He insisted he knew the Nein, and that he needed to speak with them. He then attempted to flee the guards, and became violent when they moved to arrest him.” 

“And who is this?” Essek demanded. Calmly, and professionally. “Did you get a name?”

“He has refused to give us one. At least, one we believe he actually uses.”

Essek dipped his head, understanding his job now. A simple breaking and entering would normally not require placement in the Shadowspire, but the Nein had become a very special case.  _ Heroes of the Dynasty,  _ they had been labeled. Those who returned the stolen Beacon, those who sealed demons out of their cities, those who fostered peace between warring nations. 

“Do you believe him to be of the Empire?” Essek asked, remembering the Nein’s reservations. They were on their way to these talks as he spoke.

“We are not certain. He is of infernal heritage, however.” 

Essek’s mind went to  _ Yasha,  _ the one who had been controlled, likely by the same entity who had influenced Taskhand Adeen. Obann had been a fiend, though whether he lay within infernal or abyssal nature, Essek did not know. 

They remained silent until Ruasorin halted, motioning to a cell. Essek peered inside. There was a figure within, laid out on the ground in a startlingly  _ casual  _ manner. Arms pillowed his head, one leg propped up on the knee while a spaded tail swished back and forth, comfortable albeit bored. A purple tiefling was housed beyond the bars, skin littered with scars and tattoos, horns that curled about his face, long and knotted hair. He’d been forced into prisoner’s clothes that exposed the injuries he had sustained while resisting arrest. 

“I am here to speak with you,” Essek called. He started, as he always did, with a soft voice. Something welcoming, something comforting. It never worked the way he wanted. 

The tiefling paused, tail stilling against the floor. Then he curled his legs against his chest and pumped them forward, using the momentum to surge up into a sitting position. With one black eye and a split lip, the smile he flashed was likely far less charming than he’d intended. “To who do I owe the honor? To whom? I never did understand the difference.” 

“My name is Shadowhand Essek. What can I call you?” 

“Bren Laurence,” the tiefling answered, which was visibly a lie. Through the bars of his cell, Essek could start to pick out the details of his myriad tattoos. Snakes and feathers and bright red dots that matched his eyes — perhaps they were duplicates of those same eyes. The tiefling’s entire appearance was ostentatious, impossible to ignore, impossible to  _ forget _ , a poor decision if he wished to act as a criminal.

“Bren,” Essek repeated. He wouldn’t play along forever, but it would work for now. “I understand you attempted to break into one of the Dynasty’s properties.” 

“In my defense, I  _ did _ knock first.” 

“What business did you have there?”

The tiefling bared his teeth in a smile. “Just a visit.” 

“For what purpose?”

“A vacation out east.” He leaned against the cell wall, bracing between his heels and his back to stretch. “I heard that the air out here is great for the lungs, you know? Need to take a month or two out of the country until I’ve recovered from my agonies.”

Essek ran his tongue over his teeth, pensive. Hidden under his mantle, he was toying with decorative rings, a contemplative habit. How long did he play along? How long until he explained the  _ exact _ position this tiefling was in. Perhaps a slight increase pressure was required here. That was his specialty, after all. 

Turning to one of the guards, Essek uncovered one hand to motion to the cell. She stepped forward without a word, unlocking it as the other guard gripped their halberd in warning. Essek swept inside. For the first time, as the bars clattered shut and locked, the tiefling’s eyes found the floor that Essek did not touch. His brow furrowed. “Do you just float?” He asked. 

Essek ignored the question. “Let me ask you again, friend,” he crooned, letting enchantment weave into his voice. “What was your business there?” 

It was a simple charm, enough to ease the mind and garner trust, at least temporarily. Even those hostile to him would easily fall to its sway — and yet the tiefling did not even falter. He only narrowed his eyes into a glare, resisting the spell as it attempted to worm into his brain. “That’s not going to work on me,  _ friend,”  _ he spat. “Try again.” 

Essek was calm. Composed. Controlled. Certainly, such easy resistance to his magic…  _ incensed  _ him. But it was hardly his only trick. 

He curled his fingers, a hiss of magic on his breath. Gravity thickened. The tiefling’s back, already slouched along the wall, was abruptly flush to it. The tiefling gasped, wheezing in a breath against the pressure on his chest. 

“This is my third try,” Essek hushed. “I promise you, you will not like the fourth. Now, tell me. What do you want with the Mighty Nein?” 

He knelt down, though he never touched the ground, face looming into the tiefling’s. Red eyes glowered at him, lips pulled back into a fanged sneer. Essek nearly snarled back, tempted to flash his own teeth. “I will explain your position to you. You are in the Dungeon of Penance in the capital city of the Kryn Dynasty. I assume you cannot remember the way out of here? Perhaps you are currently feeling the nausea of our wards. You will not be able to escape this place. You will not be rescued from this place.”

His hand settled at the tiefling’s throat, a warning. “This is your chance to speak honestly, without further pain. If you do not answer my questions, I will extract them from you by force. You have threatened honored Heroes of the Dynasty. Understand that you are in a  _ dire _ position. Cooperate out of your own sense of self preservation if nothing else, even if it  _ has _ failed you thus far.”

Something in there made the tiefling pause. He swallowed, Essek could feel the convulsions under his hand. “Okay,” he rasped. 

Reward good behavior. Essek pulled his magic, slowly enough that the tiefling would not just collapse as his weight settled back onto the ground. He rose again, backing up a ways to give him room to breathe. “Let’s start over. You may call me Shadowhand Essek Thelyss. What can I call you? Please do not lie to me, I promise I will know.” 

From his hunched position, still panting in each breath, the tiefling eyeballed him. Then he sighed. “Well, it  _ probably  _ doesn’t matter.” He slumped back against the wall, letting his head loll. There were holes bored into his horns, Essek noticed, and wondered if they were decorative or served another purpose. “Mollymauk Tealeaf.  _ Probably _ . And it is a  _ real  _ pleasure to meet you, just a delight.”

Essek stilled. 

_ It was right before he died, there was this story he told me —  _

_Somewhere out there, there is this town that thinks Molly is The_ _Shit._

There was a name that Nott had given him, first, before  _ Molly.  _ A name, and a title, one he hadn’t given lingering thought. “Lucien?” He asked. 

The tiefling flinched. His eyes went wide, darted about the cell, breath catching.  _ That _ was panic. For the first time since they started, he couldn’t seem to find his voice.

Essek hesitated before saying, “I take it that is not a name you prefer. Mollymauk, then?”

Molly started at him. Nodded, once, stilted and short. 

“Why were you seeking the Mighty Nein, Mollymauk?” 

A breath drew in. Held. Let out. Mollymauk swallowed once before saying, “I appear to have lost my memory! I woke up in the dirt and clawed myself free. I found a coat, which _better_ not be damaged, by the fucking way. I found a note telling me my name, and sending me to a place where I found _fuckall,_ signed by _the_ _Mighty Nein._ So they seem to know who I am, and I think I would like to know that as well.”

He was breathing hard by the end of the spiel. His tail shifted along the ground, nervous or irritated or scared if Essek had learned enough from Jester’s body language. There wasn’t a hint of malice or untruth, just confusion and fear and — even now — plenty of irritation. “I got the message that they’re kind of a big deal here, didn’t realize  _ how  _ big, didn’t expect to get thrown into max security for trying to climb in a first story window.” 

“I believe that breaking and entering is a crime in most places,” Essek mumbled, just frowning down at him. 

_ Well.  _

This was a conundrum. But then, most things involving the Nein were. Most things involving his  _ friends  _ were. Friends who had spoken of a  _ Molly  _ with smiles and a sorrow, asked after him, or at least his past self, despite how unlikely it would be that Essek could know him. They cared for this person, who Essek had just threatened to torture. 

He turned to the guards. “Fetch his things. I am claiming custody of this prisoner.” 

The guards hesitated, but a tip of his head was enough to get one of them to move. Behind him, Molly said, “Uh,  _ what?”  _

Essek turned to him, offering a hand. “I… apologize,” he said. “I do not understand the full details of your situation. However, I do know the Mighty Nein. Given that you are not a citizen of the Dynasty, you may stay with me until the Nein return.” He paused. “If you would prefer to be alone, I can arrange for that, but in that case I will need to assign you a guard to be with you at all times. Under my custody, you will be granted more freedoms, as you will be my charge. It is your choice.” 

Mollymauk frowned at him. Then, he took Essek’s hand, using it to pull himself up to his feet. He was shorter than Essek would expect, even hovering off the ground. Looked almost small, with the exhaustion under his eyes and the uncertainty within them. 

“Alright. Sure, I’ll room with you. I feel like I’m down for sharing.” And he grinned, something with a mischief that reminded Essek idly of his absent friends. 

Friends who, when left alone, immediately began to dig through his things.  


This was the sort of person he’d just agreed to house. 

The guard returned, a bag of all the items they’d confiscated from Mollymauk in her hands. Essek took it, found the coat Molly _must_ have been referring to — it was tattered and faded and smelled of earth, but the tiefling clung to it how a child clung to a stuffed toy before putting it on. At once, the change in his posture was apparent. He stood up straighter, his tail curved instead of hung. He put on a showman’s smile and turned it on Essek, saying, “Alright, Mister Thelyss. Lead the way.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time writing Essek's POV. Truth be told, prior to episode 90 I wasn't super focused on him, but all the traitor speculation caught my interest. The hotboi has two hands. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think! Knowing people are reading this and enjoying this is what motivates me to write and I’m a little nervous pursuing a multi chapter fic for a bit of a niche interest. 
> 
> You can reach me on tumblr at Grimmseye.tumblr.com if you wanna chat or read this story there!


	2. Chapter 2

The chalk in his hand dragged smooth over the ground, leaving shimmering lines and rounds just above the surface they were marked against. Fifty gold pieces and a fifth level slot was entirely too much to make a trip home from within the city, but Mollymauk was in no condition to be walking there and Essek did not want to hire someone to take them. 

The last line connected, the circle broke into solid, glowing violet. Essek stood and took Mollymauk by the wrist to pull him through. There was a sensation of dropping, falling forward and then being suddenly upright again and in another space, on the wooden floor of the small room he’d designated to his teleportation circle. 

Molly staggered at his side, bracing one hand against the wall. “A little warning next time,” he breathed, shaking his head. 

“My apologies,” Essek said, without remorse. “It can take some getting used to, if you haven’t done it before.” 

Mollymauk only grumbled, taking a moment to catch his balance and his breath. Essek opened the door that lead out to a sitting room, designed for playing host to the formal gatherings his position sometimes sprang upon him. It connected from there to a dining room, and then a rarely-used kitchen. The dishes from Caduceus’ cooking remained, and abruptly Essek felt a warmth touch his cheeks. He was never messy, not where it could be seen, and yet Mollymauk’s first impression of him would be slobbish if the tiefling were to take just ten paces into the next room and peer through the entryway. 

“You need a bedroom,” he declared, half a realization, half a distraction. Then he repeated, quieter, “You need a bedroom,” with all the weight such a statement carried. 

He  _ had  _ bedrooms. They had never been used, but caution kept him prepared. Should he ever need to play host overnight, best to have something already in place rather than be caught off guard. Essek had not been  _ off guard  _ since he was a child learning his first spell. 

Caught in his musings, Essek blinked and found Mollymauk startlingly close and staring up into his face. He drifted back on instinct, schooling his face into an affronted scowl.  _ “Yes?” _ He said, pointed. 

“Nothing,” Molly replied, eyebrows lifting. “You were just staring for a few seconds there, I was worried something came loose up top.” He tapped the side of his head twice and grinned. “So lemme ask you this, friend: how much of a  _ guest  _ versus a  _ prisoner  _ am I here?”

“You are not a prisoner,” Essek said, which wasn’t quite truthful. “For the time being, we want you under escort should you be outside of my property. This is standard procedure for released prisoners, even if I am vouching for you. It has the additional benefit of ensuring you won’t get lost.” 

“Uh-huh,” Mollymauk nodded, his blasé tone of voice vexatious at best. “Lots of pretty words that translate to me still being a prisoner. I got that already, you don’t need to explain it again. I’m referring to my position  _ within  _ your property.” He paused, and then gave a slow smile that Essek couldn’t quite translate. “Am  _ I  _ your property?”

The meaning clicked into place. Essek’s ears folded back as he fought the urge to recoil. That look implied scandal, but mischief danced behind the eyes. Mollymauk was fucking with him. 

He had certainly been a member of the Nein. 

“No,” he said, his voice short and final. “You are free to explore anything within this house. There are towers outside which are designated to my own business, but you would be unable to enter them even if you should try. Please clean up any messes you make, and feel free to ask me any questions you may have.” 

“Fantastic. So, first request: could I get a hairbrush?” Molly ran his fingers through his hair — or attempted to, at least. It was nearly matted. “I did end up losing mine on my way here, and then got  _ arrested  _ before I could purchase a new one.” 

“Of course,” Essek nodded. After a beat, he realized he needed to show Mollymauk the way. “There is a guest bedroom — this way, upstairs — with a shower as well if you’d like to wash up.”

“Oh I  _ would.”  _

“And I can clean whatever clothes you brought with you.” 

“Excellent. I’ve only got two pairs. I’ll just leave this one outside the door then?” Molly motioned to himself. He wore traveler’s clothes, but even such sturdy material was wearing thin. Essek frowned, thinking of the other set he’d found, colorful and audacious and faring far worse. He would need new clothes, then. He would be needing many things. 

That was what Essek pondered as he waited outside the bathroom door, until it cracked open for Molly to set his badly folded clothes out in the hall. He conjured an invisible servant to take care of the washing, and then immediately moved for the study to find a pen and a pad of paper. 

_ Shopping List (Guest): _

_ New clothes for Mollymauk _

  * _Make appointment_


  * Ensure: warm/winter, rain, fine, sleep, and casual wear. Multiple pairs of shoes (hooves? Check this)



_ Groceries  _

  * _Breakfasts:_



Essek immediately paused. He could cook. He often chose not to. He certainly didn’t cook for other people. 

_ Groceries — determine later  _

_ Luxuries? Ask Mollymauk his preferences.  _

_ Extra bedsets (2?)  _

He was going to be housing Mollymauk for the foreseeable future. He was going to have a full-time guest until the Nein returned, and last they left Xhorhas, they vanished without a trace for into a device named the  _ Happy Fun Ball Slash The Archmage Bane  _ and returned with their formerly-brainwashed friend. Essek was learning to expect the unexpected with that odd group. 

Needless to say, he could not rely on an  _ expedient  _ return. So. A guest. Essek would need to entertain him. Ensure he was taken care of, and staying  _ out _ of trouble. He would likely have to put aside his work to babysit this tiefling, who allegedly had  _ amnesia  _ and did not even know who the Nein truly were. 

He didn’t realize he was wringing his hands until he felt the bite of his own nails. Essek took a breath. He could do this. He’d worn a facade since childhood, he could keep it up, full-time, in his own home, without breaks, indefinitely. Essek bowed his head and considered breaking into the fine wines. 

The spiral was interrupted by the sound of clicking steps.  _ Hooves, Mollymauk had hooves.  _ Not all tieflings did. 

Mollymauk was also naked in the doorway. 

“How do you turn on the shower,” he asked, as Essek nearly threw his pen in his haste to turn away. He braced his elbow against the desk, a hand swinging up to shield his peripheral vision. 

“You’re naked,” he stated, with false cheer. 

Mollymauk clicked his tongue. “There weren’t any towels either.” 

Essek very nearly slammed his head down into the desk. He stood up, unclasping his mantle in a rush and shifting towards Mollymauk to hold out the garment, waiting until he was  _ certain  _ through the corner of his eye that the tiefling was covered up to look at him. A dangerously polite smile was affixed to his face. “I will show you how to work the shower,” he said, ever helpful, ever calm. 

“It’s appreciated.” Molly trotted back down the hall, somehow perfectly unbothered that Essek had seen exactly how far those tattoos reached. His ears flickered madly with the tiefling’s gaze off of him, trying to bat the embarrassed heat away. 

It was a little gratifying when Molly nearly tripped on the length of his mantle. 

Essek wrestled himself back into composure before he moved ahead, showing Mollymauk the individual crystals embedded in his shower wall and how they worked. “The large gemstone in the center here turns it on. Press it once for the faucet,” he demonstrated, a stream of water pouring out from the lower faucet at his touch. “And again for the shower. The one beneath it turns the water off. Here, this crystal is for temperature —” 

It was all relatively simple. The crystal turned in place, its color flowing through a gradient of blue to purple to red depending on the water’s temperature. Even with the simplicity of the system, he was pleased to turn around and find Mollymauk wide-eyed and beaming up at him, tail curling with excitement. 

“I could  _ kiss _ you,” he declared. “You, sir, have just given me the greatest of gifts. I mean, there’s room for improvement. If you happen to have something more in the line of a  _ spa,  _ please let me know what I need to do to get  _ that,  _ but this? This will do  _ just fine!”  _

Essek did, in fact, have something akin to a spa, but it was connected to  _ his  _ bedroom, and he was not about to offer up that space. “I am pleased that it’s to your liking,” he smiled. Then, serious again, “Please just leave my clothes outside the door,  _ after  _ I have left. I will bring a towel and a robe for you. Before I leave, is there anything else?” 

Mollymauk poked his head into the shower with a hum. “Soap, shampoo, conditioner, check check and check. I am golden, my friend. You’re free to go.” 

_ Thank the Luxon,  _ Essek didn’t say, only dipping his head to drift back out of the bathroom. He stalled his servant from its task to bring a towel and robe up, returning to his study. Once he tackled a grocery list, he could hire someone to collect it all for him. 

Essek found his statuette of an ivory raven, running a finger down its beak to bring it into flesh and feathers. It stood, attentive as he cleared his throat and dictated: “Seamstress Brirr, this is Shadowhand Essek Thelyss. I need to commission a full wardrobe for a guest, a tiefling. Do you have a slot tomorrow?” 

Once the message was given and the recipient described, the bird took wing through a window and out into the city. 

Down the hall, Essek heard the pattering of water stop. The door opened some minutes later, the sound of hooves announcing Molly wherever he went. At least Essek knew he could find him. 

There was a short knock at the doorway. Essek turned, not without trepidation, and nearly sagged with relief to find Mollymauk wrapped in his robe, hair bound in a towel. “That was wonderful,” Mollymauk sighed, leaning against the frame. “I would have stayed longer but my hair is unforgivable.” 

“A hairbrush,” Essek remembered, nodding. “Of course, let me get that for you. Just, ah, make yourself comfortable.” He’d evidently forgotten to stock the guest chambers properly. Embarrassment seized him again, something he tried to shake off with the reminder that at least it wasn’t Kryn nobility he was scorning. It could be far worse. 

When he returned from his own quarters, Mollymauk had indeed made himself quite comfortable. He was sprawled in one of the armchairs, his robe falling open around the scarred chest, modesty protected by the tie that bound it shut. Molly’s eyes flicked up to him from where he’d been idly examining the bookcase, and he sat up with a grin.  _ “Excellent,  _ thank you,” he said, lifting both arms to curl his fingers in a way that said  _ gimme. _

Did Essek catch a wince, there? He frowned, noting that along with the scars there were fresh bruises on Mollymauk’s chest, creeping under the sleeve of his robe. As Molly began to pull his hair over one shoulder, there was a definite tension that pulled into his shoulders. His tail lay perfectly still, betraying nothing — and its quiet said far more about Mollymauk’s current state than if it had been lashing. 

“You’re staring again,” Molly pointed out lightly. This time, Essek didn’t back down. 

“You’re hurt,” he returned.

Molly widened his eyes in mock surprise, mouth opening as he breathed, “No,  _ really?”  _ He smirked at Essek’s flat expression. “Your friends were a bit rough with me. It wasn’t like they just frogmarched me to your prison,  _ no,  _ they had to get a good beating in first. Your little trick in the cell certainly didn’t  _ help.” _ He snorted.

Essek’s ears folded down. He grimaced to himself, a pang of not  _ guilt  _ so much as  _ regret  _ needling at him. The Nein would not be happy with him. As much as they seemed willing to beat each other up, the moment another person laid a hand on them they were staring down a pack of snarling Moorbounders. 

On an impulse, maybe pity, maybe a distant hope that Molly just  _ won’t tell,  _ Essek extended a hand. Molly furrowed his brow, slowly offering the hairbrush. With then, Essek dragged a footrest over with a beckoning motion, patting it and saying, “Sit here. Back to the chair, please.”

“You mind explaining?” Molly asked, but did as he was told. Essek took the seat he’d just occupied, frowning at the mess of hair. He’d once worn his own long, when he was younger. It had just been a very long time since he’d had to do more than tidy it upon waking. 

Essek scooped a section of hair to his back again, holding it as he began to work the brush through the tips. Molly’s tail flicked, sitting up straight for a moment before the tension loosed from his shoulders. “Oh so you  _ do  _ know how to treat a guest right,” he purred. 

“Was I treating you wrong before?” Essek demanded. He got to the first matted section, glad that Molly had wet his hair before this as he began to tease it apart with quick motions of the brush. “For the sake of my sanity, let’s judge my service as a host only from the point where you entered the property.”

“Wise decision,” Molly drawled. “... _Mmmm,_ but for the most part I was only fucking with you. And believe me, with  _ this  _ all previous criticisms have been rescinded.” 

“I would still like to know the criticisms,” Essek muttered, and only got a breathy laugh in response. 

It was slow going, working through each mass of tangles without ripping his hair. It needed to be trimmed as well, uneven and broken at the tips. A shower had done him well, but a single wash hadn’t been enough to undo neglecting it for so long, oil still streaking the roots of his hair as Essek ran the brush through them. Mollymauk tipped his head into it, an angle were Essek could see his face, eyes shut and lips parted. 

“Do you prefer your hair loose?” Essek asked, setting the brush down. He took up his notepad again, adding  _ haircut  _ to the list. 

Mollymauk hummed as he ran his fingers through it. “I think so. Let’s try it. Where’s the rest of my stuff, by the way?” 

As Essek halted his servant’s work again to bring Molly’s belongings up, he laid out tomorrow’s itinerary. The raven returned, delivering Brirr’s response. They would get Mollymauk’s measurements taken care of, purchase some sets of casual clothing until the new outfits were finished, visit a place to get Mollymauk a haircut.

The bag was brought up partway through the conversation. Molly frowned, his hands pausing as he dug through it. Tarnished jewelry, a pouch of incense, a brooch depicting a draconic god. He produced a rusted metal helmet that made Essek blurt out, “Why do you have that?” and Molly tip his head back, shrug his shoulders, and say, “I have  _ no  _ fucking idea.”

His snickering nearly made Essek join in, smiling faintly at this… bemusing creature. He knew very little of this person from the Nein’s brief allusions to him. Assuming he was even the same person, memories of his companions gone but still understanding facts of the world. Had Mollymauk Tealeaf been this to them, someone who could make you bristle as easily as laugh, a disarming union between sincerity and utter bullshit. 

He was frowning, now, staring at the emptied bag and all the little trinkets he’d removed from it. Essek cleared his throat, asked, “Is something missing?”

“My scimitars,” Mollymauk said, immediately. Tiefling ears weren’t as expressive as elven, but they flexed backwards in a familiar manner. “I was buried with two scimitars, I had them when I was arrested, and now I  _ don’t  _ have them.” His tail curled and then lashed to the other side of his body, the spaded tip brandished like a knife. 

Essek made a private note: inquire about Mollymauk apparently waking up in his grave. He was beginning to understand now why the Nein connected talk of the Beacons to this person. 

“What if we do this,” he started, weighing his chin on his fist. “I will drop you off at a local spa tomorrow, and while you get cleaned up, I can return to the Shadowspire to reclaim your weapons.” And examine them for any odd enchantments. 

Molly turned his head back, an odd sort of smile on his face. “That will do,” he said, simply. Then he rose to his feet, stretching, and turned to fully face Essek. “Now then. Why don’t you show me to my bedroom, good sir. You would think after waking in the dirt I’d be done with sleeping.”

“A bed is superior to a grave, I would think,” Essek murmured, standing with him. “Not that I have the experience to compare.”

Mollymauk barked out a laugh. Essek showed him to one of the spare bedrooms, promising to have his clothes clean and dry by morning. As he was turning to move back down the corridor, hoping to get some work done before settling down for his own meditation, he was stopped by a touch to his arm. 

Essek shifted away from it, finding Mollymauk’s hand outstretched. He was still smiling, a softer thing now that it was weighed with exhaustion. “Thank you,” Molly said, emphasizing each word. Then he shut the door. 

Essek stared at it for a long moment before nodding to himself. He drew a deep breath, moving down the hallway and outside, towards his laboratory. As much as Caleb and Nott assured him the mishap had been a result of a curse, Essek wasn’t satisfied. Perhaps he could find a way to make the spell dig  _ deeper.  _

And perhaps he could take a breath and prepare himself for his next day playing host to Mollymauk Tealeaf. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking things slow to start. Essek is a very fun character to get into the headspace of. I'm not writing him quite accurately to how I actually view him — I _don't_ buy that he's just a lonely wizard, I feel there's more he's not saying (and that it may come to light in a bad way eventually). But this fic isn't for Essek theories! 
> 
> That being said, someday I swear I'll write a short crackfic about Essek and Lucien knowing each other somehow. That sounds fun. 
> 
> As usual, please let me know how you're liking the story so far! Thank you so much for the positive response to start this off, it's motivating to know y'all are enjoying! <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo this was later than I would have liked D: 
> 
> Lil content warning for stigma against mental health subjects.
> 
> Also: after last episode we are officially in an offshoot timeline!

The bed was the single most comfortable place Mollymauk had been in his entire life. 

His _ entire  _ memory consisted of about a month or two or three of running amok in between: sleeping in the dirt, fighting or running for his short fraction of a life, and  _ passing out _ in the dirt again. Rinse and repeat until he was here, in a bed that was actually worth more than a few silver pieces a night, and he was certain that he  _ never  _ wanted to leave. The warmth of the blankets and the comfort of the mattress and the pillow under his head granted the deepest sleep he knew of.

He was clean. His back didn’t hurt. There were no screaming monstrosity trying to eat him. Life just might be a thing worth living, Mollymauk realized. Up until now, it had just felt like an exceedingly cruel joke. 

The clattering downstairs was a bit  _ less  _ glorious. He buried his face in the pillow, trying to block out the sound. This was his home now. Forever. Warm and soft and safe, always. Luxury was the only way to live. 

Except he  _ did  _ have to piss. And there was a hunger gnawing at his stomach. The prison hadn’t granted him much in the way of meals, nor had Essek offered one last night, which was yet another strike against his hosting ability. And so began Mollymauk’s valiant effort to convince himself that getting out of bed meant relieving all the aches and insistences of his body. 

_ Once he’d eaten, he could simply return to bed, _ Molly reminded himself, and that was the final burst of motivation he needed to let his hooves touch the floor.

Clean, folded clothes were set just inside the door. He’d slept through it being opened, apparently, something that would have gotten him killed out in the wilds of Xhorhas. Perhaps that was what hedonism meant, self-indulgence to the point of destruction. 

_ Worth it,  _ he snickered, pulling his clothes on before wandering out into the corridor. A trip to the bathroom later, he was sliding down the stair’s rail and to the first floor, following the scent of a slightly-burned  _ something  _ to the kitchen. 

Essek was wearing an apron. The material was stiff, like a gift given and never worn, and the straps were tied in a knot that would be a pain to undo later. Still, Molly leaned in the doorframe, smiling to himself at the sight of the respectable Shadowhand grimacing over a pan of sausages. 

“Staring at ‘em won’t get you far,” Mollymauk informed him, enjoying the stiffness that jerked into Essek’s back. It eased a moment later, and he had to admit he was impressed by the man’s poise as he turned around to give a perfectly polite smile. 

“I hope you’ve rested well,” Essek greeted. He waved to the pan, saying, “I’ve only just started cooking.”

Mollymauk scanned the rest of the kitchen. There was only the one pan on the stove. Only sausages were in the aforementioned pan. No bread or eggs or porridge or _anything_ at all to go with it, traditional breakfasts be damned. “Do you just have that, or…?” He let the question trail out. 

Essek frowned at the pan. “I had some groceries sent over, so I need to look through those to determine what would go best with this.” 

“Probably should have started with that. Meat cooks fast, and it’ll be cold by the time anything else is ready.” Molly trotted into the kitchen, making a beeline for what was probably the pantry, hanging off one door as he swung it open. He grabbed a loaf of bread, searching for the knife drawer as he chirped, “This will do! Do you want butter, jelly? Do you have those, actually, before I go too far.”

“Butter, yes,” Essek said, watching him with a furrowed brow. Molly hummed as he found the toaster, clamping each slice between metal bars and lighting another flame at the stove to toast them. “And, I am sure they brought preserves of some kind.”

“Wonderful, wonderful.” Perhaps it wasn’t the three course breakfast in bed he would have liked, but the way his stomach was growling, the room-temperature bread alone was looking pretty delicious. 

Something took the toaster’s handle from his grasp. Molly blinked in surprise as he watched it continue to turn without his grip, held aloft by an — 

“Invisible servant,” Essek explained. “You should sit down. You’re my guest, don’t trouble yourself on my behalf.”

“If you insist,” Molly shrugged. The table was already set, and he had no qualms with falling into a chair to tip it back against the wall and watch Essek work. He was a  _ meticulous  _ fellow. As out of his element as he seemed, fumbling around breakfast plans and overlooking a guest’s needs, there was something very precise in the man’s every detail. The way he moved, drifting rather than walking. Long fingers, clever fingers. A spellcaster’s hands, something in his brain told him, though he didn’t know where it came from. Molly wouldn’t be surprised if Essek were timing things exactly before removing the pan from the stove, the toaster from the flame. 

As elaborate as the display was, breakfast itself was comicall plain. Toast and sausages, served upon gilded plates over a pristine tablecloth, water poured into crystal glasses. Mollymauk couldn’t help but lean deep to one side just to check if Essek’s butt was seated fully in his chair, and he felt some disappointment to find that it was. 

“I apologize for the simplicity of the meal,” Essek started. 

Mollymauk rolled his eyes. “Quit apologizing. I’m still enjoying the bedrest afterglow and the sound of feigned guilt will ruin it.” 

“Feigned guilt —”

“Or just shame for your performance?” Molly suggested. “I get the picture. All of this,” he waved to the room they sat in, “is a stage. To impress and entertain, and to follow the script. And you, my friend, are the fulltime actor now that I’m here. One person is always in the audience. And I don’t mean any criticism by that — well, maybe some, but I  _ am  _ a hypocrite. For some reason, I greatly respect the art of entertainment, so at the very least I’m not looking down on you.” He smiled. 

Essek’s expression didn’t change, but there was something colder in the glint of his eyes. “You have quite the… active imagination,” he commented, perfectly polite as the script demanded. 

_ “Thank  _ you,” Molly grinned, all teeth. 

Essek insisted he didn’t help wash the dishes, and for a blissful moment Mollymauk truly believed he would just spend the rest of the day in that lovely,  _ lovely  _ bed. Instead he heard, “Well, we should be heading out, now. We’ll get your measurements done first and then you can spend a few hours at the spa, if you would like.” 

_ Spa  _ was a word as sweet as  _ bed.  _ Mollymauk had his boots laced in a heartbeat. He looked up to Essek, just in time to be treated to the sight of the elf floating over a pair of fine dress shoes, his long mantle hiding them from view. A moment later, when he moved away, the shoes had vanished from the floor. 

Molly sputtered. Essek gave him a Look, a furrowed both and a thin frown as Mollymauk wheezed out a laugh, shaking his head. “Nothing, it’s nothing,” he breathed. “How many of the fine folk here absorb their shoes each morning, or is it just a quirky thing you do?” 

Essek opened his mouth. Sharp teeth, Molly noted, approvingly. He closed his mouth, drew in a deep breath, and sighed before drifting for the door. “It’s polite to arrive at your appointments a few minutes early,” he said, smoothly ignoring Mollymauk. “We should leave now to ensure that.” 

“Sure, sure,” Molly smiled, sauntering after him. 

The streets of the city were disorientingly dark. His brain insisted it was morning, and that they should be strolling through the pale light of the eastern sun. He remembered first seeing that eerie cloud during his journey, hanging in the distance and feeling like an ill omen from so far away. The road to his life, to filling the  _ hole  _ in his chest, sat under a curtain of black. 

Now he knew it to just be thanks to the drow’s sensitive eyes. Essek’s were nearly pale as the moon, the softest lavender with no visible pupils. 

As he stared, Essek’s ear twitched. His head turned faintly to the side, a glance through the corner of his eye finding Mollymauk’s. “What is it?” Essek asked, facing him completely. 

“Oh, nothing,” Molly said. As sincere as the comment would be, strangers didn’t often appreciate his compliments, or took them the wrong way. Molly appreciated different things about the body — the way the merchant’s knuckles jutted out, and the fingers narrowed in between each joint, the lopsided quality to a bartender’s smile and his crooked teeth, or the eerie, nearly-snowblind quality to this dark elf’s eyes. Eerie wasn’t bad. Eerie was captivating, lured him in, left him incapable of looking away. Yet very few people would hear his words how he intended them. 

Even with the deflection, Essek kept staring at him. Mollymauk only smiled politely and took hold of his own tail to twine it between his fingers. 

They passed large, elaborate properties, many guarded or gated or both. Even once they left the residential area, it was clear they were in the upper class portion of the city. Every last person was dressed  _ nearly  _ as elaborately as Essek. They stared openly, too, and that pointed to being the audacious sort, which Mollymauk wouldn’t entirely mind if it weren’t so rude. He only shook his hair back and started whistling a jolly tune, letting his hooves clack on the pavement in time with the song. 

Essek snorted once, what was  _ possibly  _ a laugh. Molly had to grin, counting that a considerable victory.

They hailed a carriage passing on the streets, letting it carry them the rest of the way. Their destination was a sight that made Molly’s tail twist with excitement: a single story building with glass windows displaying suits and dresses and jewelry and an entire array of gorgeous things to wear. Some were far too classy for his liking, but there were enough bold patterns to make him salivate. 

They passed through glass doors, a small bell chining overhead. “If any of these are to your liking, you can tell Brirr,” Essek said, gesturing around the shop. “She’s quite talented at matching up your desire with something that will still look respectable.”

“You’re not gonna get respectable from me,” Mollymauk murmured, as he admired a set of earrings. One was a star, a golden stud matched with a dangling silver moon. There were ear cuffs, meant for elves but perhaps he could make them fit the shorter tiefling ears — there had to be variations, after all. 

The browsing was interrupted by the seamstress’ arrival. Seamstress Brirr was a bugbear woman, her broad paws doing surprisingly delicate work as she took Mollymauk’s measurements and chatted him up. She questioned his style preference, and his answers seemed to make her eyes  _ gleam.  _ “As loud as you can get while still looking beautiful,” Mollymauk insisted. “Clashing patterns are fine, I can make them work.”

“I’m  _ sure  _ you can,” she rumbled, baring her teeth in a fanged smile. It would feel threatening if Molly couldn’t see his own delight mirrored back at him. 

It took far less time than expected. She ushered them out, promising to send word as his outfits were completed, and taking a  _ hefty  _ bag of coin from Essek. 

Mollymauk’s ears tilted back. “I didn’t realize how much that was going to cost you,” he started. 

Essek waved it off. “The Mighty Nein are heroes of the Dynasty. The least I can do is provide clothes for their friend. We can find more basic wear around the other shops. And — this is yours.” 

He passed a small box to Mollymauk, whose eyebrows crept upward as he examined it. Brirr’s name was written onto it in glittering gold ink. 

The earrings were inside, the golden star and hanging silver moon. Mollymauk went still as he stared at them, stunned into quiet. 

“... If you didn’t want them, I’m sure we could exchange them,” Essek started, when the silence stretched too long. 

“ _ Nope. _ ” Mollymauk plucked the stud out, fumbling with his ear. “These are mine now, no takebacks.” He swallowed, and then smiled up at Essek. “Thank you. And, be a dear, would you? I can’t do this without a mirror.” 

Essek paused before reaching, hesitantly, for the piercing. He was almost  _ too  _ delicate as he tugged Molly’s earlobe, feeding the point through and letting Mollymauk press the back into place. The same was repeated for the other piece, a comfortable weight swinging off his ear. His tail flicked back and forth in unison. 

A steady warmth welled up in his chest. He  _ just might  _ like Essek. 

Darting from store to store was a process. Essek was silent as Molly browsed, and offered stilted, neutral commentary when asked for opinions. There was something absolutely delightful about dynasty fashion, and that was that with the number of elves with blue and purple skintones, there were more viable options for him than Mollymauk had ever encountered in his brief life. 

It was with bags weighing his arms that they at last turned for the promised event:  _ the spa.  _ “This,” Mollymauk breathed, “is shaping up to be the best day of my life. Now, that wasn’t very hard to top, but I think you’re allowed to be proud of yourself.”

Essek let out a soft breath that Molly was starting to recognize as a laugh of sorts. “I’m… honored,” he said. There was a pause before he added, “You haven’t asked many questions.” 

“Should I be?” Molly asked mildly, and then smirked. “Oh! There’s one.” 

The humor seemed to be lost on his host, as he only said without missing a beat, “It must have been a harrowing journey to get here. It’s well known that the lands outside our cities are dangerous. And you claim that you came all this way, with no memory of the Nein you are pursuing, because of a note?” 

“That’s right,” Molly nodded. 

“And yet you haven’t tried to find out who they are.” 

The words hung in the air a moment longer than they should have. Mollymauk’s gaze shifted away, a low hum sounding in his throat. Tieflings could purr, did so when they were calm and relaxed. A deeper rumble was reserved for the purpose of relax _ ing,  _ soothing bristling nerves, and now his chest vibrated with that deeper sound. “It’s about the journey, not the destination,” Molly said. “But sure, I’ll bite. How about you tell me their names?” 

Essek paused. “Well,” he said. “First, there is Caleb.” 

A sensation of heat flashed over Mollymauk’s skin, like a hand drifted too close to a flame. 

“There is Beauregard.  _ Expositor  _ Beauregard.” 

A mixed sensation — the need to laugh and to snarl in the same moment. 

“There is…  _ Jester.  _ Who very much lives up to her name.”

The snarl faded, just a smile, pure fondness and the want to laugh and to  _ make  _ laugh. 

“There is Nott.” 

An unnamed emotion. Suspicion, and appreciation. The respect for a good grift and the understanding he may be the next mark. 

“And there is Fjord. He is  _ typically  _ well-spoken.” A note of derision entered Essek’s voice. 

It was familiar to Mollymauk, comfortable and warm. 

“And there is Caduceus. He is unusual, but has a keen eye.” 

_ That  _ one, Mollymauk felt nothing. He blinked, silenced by the sudden twisting in his chest. The hole bored just to the right of his heart was suddenly squirming, uncomfortable.  _ This  _ was why he didn’t want to know. 

“Oh, there is one more,” Essek murmured. “She was gone for a long while. Yasha.” 

It  _ ached.  _ He was nearly breathless from it, heat behind his eyes and a sudden yawning  _ want,  _ his skin felt  _ cold,  _ the air around him  _ empty  _ when there should be something filling up the space behind him, guarding his back, holding his heart. Delicate and dangerous as belladonna. 

Yasha.  _ Yasha.  _ His  _ heart,  _ his heart was gone, that was the hole in his chest, hollowed out and,  _ “Empty.”  _

  
  
  


The word was what caught Essek’s attention. Or, not the word, but the inflection behind it. It was the dullest he’d heard Mollymauk’s voice, and the sound was nothing short of alien. 

_ “Empty,”  _ he said again, but it shook this time. And then he gasped and clutched at himself, wheezing on a breath and stammering out,  _ “Empty. Empty. E-empty, empty, empty.”  _

“Mollymauk —” Essek halted. The streets weren’t crowded, but those passing by had already been staring. Now they watched as the tiefling hugged himself and babbled, wide-eyed. The bags he’d been carrying slumped to the ground as he started to sink, until Essek moved forward to catch his weight. 

Arms flung around him. He tensed, heart skipping with a brief panic before he realized Molly wasn’t attacking him, but  _ clinging.  _ He was shoving his face into his chest and muffling each  _ empty  _ into his clothes. 

People were staring. A hot flush burned Essek’s skin as he burned magic far stronger than he should have to get the bags to lift themselves and travel along as he struggled to untangle Mollymauk’s grasp. 

He sucked in a sharp breath, shutting off his own panic. Essek tipped Mollymauk’s chin up, forcing the tiefling’s wild eyes to lock with his own. “ _ Mollymauk _ ,” he crooned, enchantment lacing his voice. “ _ You’re okay. Just follow me and everything will be okay. I promise that you’re safe with me.”  _

The tiefling had been able to shake this magic before, but perhaps thanks to his scrambled mind, Molly’s eyes glazed over. The panicked breaths evened out. The hand still fisted in his clothes relaxed. Essek took it, leading him without resistance through the streets. 

Enchantment was a dangerous school of magic. Few people appreciated having their minds toyed with, emotions changed, reasoning blurred. But this was necessary, Essek told himself. Mollymauk had been having some kind of a fit in the middle of the streets. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen such a thing. Soldiers often collapsed into wails or tears or labored breaths. He himself had experienced these fits before. Stress weighing on the brain, he knew, all fairly common in his occupation but  _ not _ to be witnessed. Not to be displayed. 

He tugged Mollymauk along to a public park, to find a secluded spot to sit him down. A bench was framed by brambles, dark blooms resting among thorns. Mollymauk sat, stilted and doll-like, to stare blankly Essek’s way. He wasn’t charmed, just convinced of the truth Essek had told him: as long as he were here, as long as Mollymauk followed him, there would be no troubles. 

Essek braced himself as he dropped his hold on the spell. 

The light returned to Mollymauk’s eyes. There was a beat before he stiffened, and then leaped to his feet, pulling away from Essek. His lip curled, a snarl on his face as he bit out, “Do  _ not — N'bb sph oep jlqh hnal.” _ A hiss of infernal rose from Molly’s throat, the hair at the back of Essek’s neck standing on end. 

He raised his hands. “I apologize,” he said, and Mollymauk silenced to just glower and pant. “I apologize,” he repeated. “I didn’t know what else to do.” 

The moment stretched out, the air thick between them. Molly’s tail twisted and lashed, and Essek’s ears pinned low. He saw the tiefling’s throat bob as he swallowed and puffed out a breath. 

“Fine,” he said, short and harsh. None of Mollymauk’s jovial attitude remained, not in his posture nor his voice. “But do not do it again. This is why I don’t ask questions.” 

“I understand,” Essek murmured. Calm and rational, that was what he needed. 

He watched as Molly calmed himself. It was a visible process, grasping his tail by the base and sliding up to its spaded tip, like smoothing wrinkles from a garment. The tension dropped from his shoulders, he shook his head and swept his hair back into place. 

“Okay,” Molly said. “I forgive you. But you had better get me to that spa now, or I’m rescinding my forgiveness.” 

“Generous of you,” Essek gave a thin smile, one that didn’t betray his relief. He started forward again, saying, “Right this way, Mister Tealeaf.” 

After a moment, he heard the clopping of hooves following. _“As you command,_ Mister Thelyss,” Mollymauk called. It was pleasant to hear the smile in his voice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Molly's infernal translates to _Next time, I will cut you._
> 
> Again, thank you so much for the positive response to this! Hearing what y'all think is genuinely the best motivator, and I hope you'll continue to share your thoughts with me! <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello, it's been a little while hasn't it? I'm getting acclimated to quarantine, plus had to take the time to consider how I want this story to progress regarding some Essek things that were revealed. I'd definitely suggest you at least watch the liveshow before you continue reading! 
> 
> PS: Mind the tags!
> 
> PPS: I was gifted some gorgeous art in response to this fic!! Got some Shadowmauk here. A little suggestive but not explicitly sexual so y'know y'know, click wisely. [Enjoy, and please support the artist!](https://julie-no.tumblr.com/post/613294192240836608/surprise-gift-for-grimmseye-because-mollymauk-x)
> 
> For the purposes of fic visualization, Essek is considerably taller than Molly (floating or not), but that's not important. Go! Look at the art!!

His job was one that weighed heavy on his shoulders. The mantle he wore sometimes felt like a manifestation of that, in the way that it shrouded him, hid him, forced his posture stiff and heavy. But if there was something Essek could appreciate, it was the authority he was granted. A simple word and the guards were moving to do his bidding without pausing to question. This was what Essek built for  _ himself.  _ Regardless of his mother’s position,  _ he  _ was the one who had come to stand at the Bright Queen’s side. 

What he retrieved were the blades that those at the Shadowspire failed to turn over. Mollymauk’s swords were made from carnival glass, curving blades that hooked towards the tips. Essek turned them over, uncertain just how well such material performed as a weapon. They looked more gaudy than effective, though they had to have gotten Mollymauk across the wastes. The glinting colors broke where dried blood still lined their edges, as though to prove it.

As he sheathed the blades, Essek turned to the guard who had produced them, saying, “Additionally, I would like to speak with those who were involved in Mollymauk Tealeaf’s arrest.” 

Again, it was a bow and obedience without question. Essek did not fancy himself to be a  _ leader,  _ but respect was pleasant. Being able to work without intervention was  _ quite _ pleasant. 

He knew better than to expect instantaneous results, and yet luck must have been on his side for this day. When the guard returned it was with two others flanking her. A pair of male drow, one stocky, the other standing taller than Essek. They greeted him with respect, but the tilt of their ears betrayed nerves.    
  
“Shadowhand,” began the taller of the two, his voice gruff. “What do you require of us?”

Essek let his eyes drag over each of them, slow and precise. Each second delayed had them winding tighter. “You are the guards who detained and arrested Mollymauk Tealeaf, yes?” He asked. “The purple tiefling, charged with breaking and entering.” 

The two exchanged looks before the taller answered, “Yes, sir. That is correct.” 

“Then I would like to issue a  _ warning.”  _ Essek did not cast a spell. He only pulled magic under his skin, let the air weigh down and compress in their lungs. A  _ warning,  _ as stated. A promise. A threat. “I was informed of the  _ excess force  _ you used while detaining the tiefling.”   
  
Quicker than expected, they broke. The shorter of the two burst out, “He was armed — There have been  _ attacks — _ ” 

“And I cannot  _ imagine _ the threat he posed, laying in the street while you kicked his ribs in,” Essek drawls back. He peers down through his eyelashes, a coldly neutral expression that was far more dangerous than blatant anger. 

Neither of them spoke.  _ Good.  _ Essek let his magic dissipate, the pressure easing as he turned to drift back through the halls with swords in hand. 

He hailed a cab back through the city, spending the time ritual casting over the swords. Neither showed so much as a drop of magic — just gloss and color shaved down to a fine edge. It was suitable for Mollymauk Tealeaf. 

They stopped outside of the Tranquil Falls Spa, Essek handing over a tip before stepping out to make for the doors. He didn’t frequent these places, only found it through asking about. The polished stone walls promised a lavish treatment, and the prices swore them to it. He’d redacted the numbers as he translated it for Mollymauk, listing out the services offered. Massages, with oils or hot stones, facials, body scrubs and moisturizers, nail treatments, hair waxing, just to name a  _ few _ . 

Mollymauk had asked about  _ massages with a happy ending  _ and it had taken Essek a moment of confusion and then embarrassment before he’d assured him  _ no,  _ they did not provide such services here. Molly ended up picking a package deal and kissed Essek’s cheek in thanks. 

He drifted to the front desk, saying, “Is Mister Tealeaf finished?” That spot on his cheek was warm, again. His lips had been somewhat chapped, which didn’t seem befitting of the tiefling one bit. He would probably appreciate access to the same paints and glitter that Essek used to decorate his own face for presentation purposes, only Mollymauk did it for the art and enjoyment, wholly for himself and the satisfaction of drawing every eye on the street. 

“He is enjoying our spa for the time being,” the receptionist answered. “Would you care to join him?” 

“Yes, thank you,” Essek answered, distracted. He didn’t realize what he’d said until she was beckoning to him, and his voice caught in his throat before he could pull it back. This would be another handful of gold out of his pocket. 

He was given a soft towel and a robe and shown to a room with tall ceilings, the walls framed by pillars. A waterfall poured into a steaming, rectangular pool, one far too large for its singular occupant. Mollymauk looked like a cat in a sunbeam: completely bare, elbows on the edges of the pool, head tilted up and eyes shut in obvious enjoyment. 

They opened, finding Essek as the receptionist said, “Enjoy your stay,” and bowed out of the room. 

“Mister Thelyss,” Mollymauk called. He could  _ hear  _ the smirk in his voice, echoing amid the sound of running water. “This place is  _ lovely.  _ I’ve decided to forgive you for all past transgressions.”

“How… generous.” Essek found a bench to set the towel on, and then the sheathed blades, and then sat himself down beside them. He pulled a book out of the air, opening it at a marked page. Sticking around felt awkward, but leaving after only a minute inside would be worse. Though, who knew what the receptionist thought of him joining Mollymauk here, in private, after receiving an affectionate display.  _ Enjoy your stay.  _ Had there been an odd emphasis there, a too-sharp curve to her smile? 

A splash of water caught his eye, making him startle as he found Mollymauk pressing himself up with his palms flat on the pool’s edge. Layers of thin scars drew paths for the water to run down his skin, down to the trail of dark hair running from his belly button, the rest hidden by the tile. He stared longer than he should before snapping his gaze up to meet Mollymauk’s. 

“Are you going to get in the pool, or are you going to sit there like a creep?” Molly asked. His tail swept up, sending an arc of droplets over the pool’s edge. 

“A creep,” Essek repeated. He frowned as he said, “I am not —” 

“Sitting around in the corner while I enjoy my bath? My friend, you look like a grade-A  _ creep  _ right now.” He spoke with all his teeth. Even the premolars held jagged points, Essek noted with some fascination. He hadn’t encountered many tieflings before. 

The truth was, Essek’s presence made things uncomfortable. All in or all out were his only options. 

“You know, hot water is  _ great  _ for tension,” Mollymauk notes, pushing himself back to drift deeper into the pool. “And no offense, my friend, but you  _ embody _ tension.” 

Essek drew himself up to protest. Then he became acutely aware of the stiffness in every muscle, and slowly let himself unwind. “I am  _ not  _ tense,” he said, which was true as of that moment. Mollymauk scoffed.  _ “But.  _ Given that I have already sentenced myself to payment… perhaps I will dip my toes in.” 

It gave him an abrupt, vivid flashback to being in the Nein’s home, the tree roots overhead, ears perked to catch snatches of conversation. That was where he’d first heard the name  _ Mollymauk.  _ What would he have done, had he not gone against his better judgement, walked away and never  _ learned  _ and then found this prisoner who had tried to break into their home. 

Something unforgivable, he was certain. Though he wasn’t sure how much deeper he could dig his own grave. At least the current pit could still be filled. 

He unclasped his mantle, folding it neatly on the bench. His fingers strayed to the hem of his shirt, pausing as he looked to Mollymauk — and found him turned politely around. It was surprisingly tactful. He slipped his shirt over his head, making sure the tiefling didn’t turn as he slid pants down his legs and left himself completely bare. 

It was amazing just  _ how  _ naked he could feel, when there was someone else to see him. Usually so hidden, he couldn’t say what prompted him to walk to the edge of the spa and lower himself into steaming water. Maybe he was getting reckless, with the peace talks looming so near. That was unwise. That was  _ dangerous.  _

He’d already crossed this particular line, though. 

“Are you decent?” Molly asked. 

Essek looked down. The water and steam obscured  _ enough. _ “Yes,” he said, after a beat. 

Mollymauk sat himself down on a step jutting out from the wall. He looked to Essek, not  _ taking stock,  _ but more of just a quizzical expression. “Are you still doing your floating thing in the water?”

Essek dropped an inch. His feet touched the tile. 

Mollymauk’s cackling echoed through the room.

  
  
  


Against all expectations, Mollymauk did  _ not  _ spend the time pestering him with inane comments and crude jokes. Didn’t give him so much as a lascivious smirk, even when he caught Essek’s eyes on him — on places they likely shouldn’t  _ be.  _

There was the guilt, again, deeper than before. Caleb had been unexpected, an attraction he’d been willing to entertain until it  _ festered _ . Until it wasn’t just a keen mind and a handsome face he was appreciating, but the dimple when he smiled, the soft tenor of his voice, the passion bright behind his eyes. When he realized, he knew it was time to pull back, as  _ guilt  _ reared its head and gnawed at his organs and made affection a precursor to nausea. And now it turned out he couldn’t even stay loyal in his infatuation. 

They slipped out of the spa, Essek retrieving his towel with a cantrip before he stood while Mollymauk had no shame in hoisting himself out on display for an audience of one. If it was intentional, or if the tiefling genuinely didn’t care about being nude, he could not determine. 

With a towel around Mollymauk’s waist and all but Essek’s mantle adorned again, he handed over the swords. Molly slid one from its sheath, a smile lighting his face. “Oh, that’s so much better,” he breathed, drawing the other in hand. “I feel naked without these, you know?”

Essek’s eyes flicked over the low-hanging towel. “That must be terrible for you.” 

“Oh, you know what I mean.” Mollymauk snorted as he adjusted his grip on each sword and gave one a toss. Essek moved back, watching as it spun once, twice, and landed neatly in Mollymauk’s waiting hand.  _ “Very  _ nice.”

There was something artful to it, as he tested their weight in each hand, spinning the blades and easing in and out of various poses. It was akin to a performance, as though he were showing this off for Essek to see, deliberate in each tension of muscle as it pulled at bone. Distracted as he was, he barely registered as Mollymauk slid leisurely towards him, lifting one blade so its tip pointed to Essek’s sternum, the other tipped over his shoulder and behind his back. And  _ that  _ was absolutely a pose, muscles stretched, chest swelling with each slow, deep breath, hair still wet and dripping across his shoulders. 

Essek could almost feel his head spin.  _ What  _ did Mollymauk want from him?

“You hold those well,” he noted. 

“Do you work with swords?” Molly asked, sounding like he expected the answer to be  _ no.  _

“I received some training,” Essek said. “Enough that I can wield them proficiently. But I am not a swordsman like yourself.” 

“Maybe I can show you a few things, then.” His smile was broad and easy. It sounded like an offer for something else. 

Essek cleared his throat. “Perhaps,” he said, looking away. “You should get dressed. There are a few more stops to make before we head back.” 

Mollymauk’s chuckle burned his ears as the tiefling changed into clean, dry clothes. The two of them exited together, Essek reluctantly handing over the gold he owed. If word of this got around —  _ Shadowhand Essek in the baths with a nameless tiefling  _ — gods, if the  _ Nein  _ heard, what would they think of him,  _ taking advantage —  _ as though that were the worst thing they could learn about him.

The clock indicated they were somewhere in the mid-afternoon as they pushed through the doors and back to the streets of Rosohna. The market square was a more lively place, the lights strung in shifting colors and voices all battling to be heard above the rest as one merchant after the next vied for the customers’ attention. 

Mollymauk dragged him to a strawberry stand, of all things. Essek would eventually have to put a stop to all this gift-giving, especially when the rest of the Nein felt so entitled to his magic, the last thing he needed was for them to ask for money as well. But strawberries were copper out of his pocket, and it made Mollymauk’s tail curl in a way that had to mean delight. 

The moment was short-lived, as red painted his vision. 

He saw it, a sudden lurch in the crowd. The gnoll’s jaws were splashed with crimson, a macabre cousin to the strawberry juice on Mollymauk’s lips. Essek could hear flesh squelch and then the  _ crunch,  _ and half a man's arm was severed from his body. The first scream tore through the market. 

Essek’s hand dipped into a pocket, finding a marble before he froze.  _ Too many people.  _ He’d kill a dozen civilians — 

Mollymauk broke from his side. Essek shouted, but he was gone, darting into the scattered crowd. Essek snarled to himself, finding a piece of iron as he gave chase. His eyes darted back and forth. One — three —  _ seven  _ people, all suddenly on the attack, all gnolls. He didn’t have time for questions. He could make sense of it later.  _ Now,  _ he counted out five bodies, pressed the iron against his palm as he traced out the sigils to  _ hold.  _

Four locked in place, wild-eyed and fangs bared, and their targets scrambled for safety. The fifth, the first to attack with a severed arm still clutched in her jaws, swung her head for Essek and  _ snarled.  _

And then she yelped as Mollymauk appeared and sliced into her face. The first swing dragged a cut across her snout, the second knocked the arm free. She  _ shrieked  _ and lunged for him, teeth fastening into Mollymauk’s arm and blood pushing between her teeth, the claws of one hand digging into his side as he forced the other back. 

Essek dragged runes into the air, these ones burning black. The gnoll released Mollymauk as she howled, skin withering, rupturing, blood spurting from a hundred breaks in her flesh. Mollymauk didn’t take the out. He seized his freedom to cut into her abdomen with one blade, making to come down with the second as the gnoll shook herself and snapped forward —

Essek’s  _ “No!”  _ was lost under a gurgling cry. Her teeth caught Molly’s neck, clamping tight and  _ squeezing _ . The market was almost cleared, now, two bodies falling under two more gnolls, a third fleeing. That was enough for him.

He scooped a cool, black sphere into his hand, and opened a black hole in the middle of the square. It swelled out, a mass of void consuming the space around it, hovering  _ just  _ where he knew it wouldn’t pull Mollymauk into its jaws. It was instantaneous, there-and-then-not. The darkness shrank into nothing. Two of the underlings had survived, the rest crumpled and broken. The escaping drow had gotten caught in the crossfire, but in the mangled state their body was in, no one would know it was his spell that killed them. 

And he’d failed to get the gnoll off of Mollymauk. A cold, boiling rage curled up Essek’s spine. The force of it had just been enough to wrench the gnoll’s head back, letting Mollymauk tumble forward to flee. She gave chase, leapt for his back and put him on the ground. Molly writhed underneath her, twisting around to jam his blades into her stomach. One of them sank  _ deep,  _ its point sticking out the other side as the gnoll’s snarling twisted into a wail. The other she caught, seizing his wrist and slamming it to the ground as her jaws parted wide. 

Her jaws snapped shut, inches away from his face. There was a beat before she reared back, clawing at her own eyes. Mollymauk kicked her away, eyes finding Essek and darting back for him as the gnoll scrabbled at her face.

“You —  _ idiot —”  _ Essek seethed, taking in the amount of  _ blood  _ coating the tiefling, soaking through his new clothes, down his back, from his  _ eyes. _ He shouldn’t be  _ standing.  _

One of his swords was glowing, Essek realized, belated. Distracted for that moment, he watched as Molly’s eyes widened and then overfilled with blood, pouring down his face like tears. A tug to his mantle was what alerted him to the two surviving underlings. As one recovered from their failed swing, blood seeping into the fur at the corners of their eyes, the other lunged. Essek flinched away from teeth, only for the sting of a blade to catch his arm. 

“Mollymauk,” he snapped, grabbing the tiefling by the arm, pulling him along as they circled the gnolls. Step by step until —  _ there.  _ Essek wrenched a piece of crystal to his lips, releasing Molly to write  _ ice  _ and  _ death  _ into the air, and blew. His breath spiraled out in a blizzard, ice flaring out in a cone to engulf their two aggressors. When the winter faded, it left two frozen statues, held in a moment of agony forever. 

But he hadn’t gotten the leader. She was there in an instant, grabbing at Essek and tearing into him _.  _ He barely felt the teeth clamp into his waist, or the talons raking down his thigh. It was furious indignation that burned him, Essek biting out,  _ “How  _ dare  _ you,”  _ in hissed undercommon as he pulled darkness into his hand to stab it down into her back.

And  _ missed.  _

The gnoll released him just for the second it took to go for his throat. He heard Molly roaring his name, couldn’t process the sound amid the sensation of his bones creaking in her jaws. Unable to reach his components, he gasped a word and vanished, reappearing on his knees and cloaked in silvery mist, clutching his bloodied arm. 

His head snapped up as he remembered Mollymauk, and he found him tearing the gnoll to shreds. Both his swords were coated in magic, one shedding a burning light and the other sharpened by ice. One cut nearly removed her arm from her torso, the second sent it to the ground in a bloody spray. His teeth were bared, white stained crimson, like he’d gone and taken a bite in his rage. 

As she staggered back, gushing blood, eyes darting for an escape — Mollymauk surged forward. He was suddenly ethereal, a ghost pushing  _ through  _ her to cleave into her back, again and again and  _ again _ . And at last, the gnoll’s eyes went glassy. She gasped once and then collapsed, the final body to fall. 

Then Mollymauk buckled as well. Essek was too far to catch him, could only dart forward and drop to his knees beside him. The tiefling was still breathing, eyes still open, but the amount of blood he was losing — he wouldn’t survive much longer. 

“Hold on,” Essek breathed, grabbing his hand and pulling them both away, leaving the emptied, bloodied square behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's kind of funny to think that in chapter two, I said that I wasn't writing Essek 100% accurately to how I viewed him. Well, since the traitor theory has been confirmed, I can now do that! I always knew he was an immoral bastard, now I _really_ get to write him how I want. 
> 
> Anyhow, I hope you're enjoying, I hope this will provide a little enjoyment during Plaguetimes. The lovely comments I got from y'all really motivated me to get back on this. Please let me know what you think, stay safe, and take care. <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: Description of a dissociative episode.

For a blink of the eyes, the world fell away.

The sensation of stone under his knees became cold tile. Mollymauk didn’t know how they’d gotten there, one moment in the market and the next _here,_ but he couldn’t dwell on it. A chill was settling under his skin, offset only by the heat of his wounds, the pressure of Essek’s vice-grip on his arm.

That grip vanished as soon as he registered it. Mollymauk slumped without its support, a whine leaving his throat, panic crawling behind it. Somehow he knew what came after this, and he did not want to be alone for it. _He wasn’t the first time, he wasn’t the second, but the third was cold and e m p t y and_

He was on the ground, now, panting. Black dots flickered in his vision. He saw the hem of Essek’s clothing dragging along the floor, saw a line of red that streaked from where he laid to where Essek stood. There was a rattling, something fell to the floor and clattered and rolled. The image doubled and then blurred beyond recognition.

And then he was upright, and the rush of it nearly made him vomit. Something was pressed to his lips, Essek’s voice in his ear, rough and breathless. He couldn’t respond, eyes rolling in his skull. There was something he was supposed to do. Something important, something _easy,_ but his brain wouldn’t keep up. 

A snarl sounded, making him flinch as Essek seized his jaw and _squeezed._ Molly’s teeth parted, and a bitter flavor drenched his tongue. He gagged, and a hand clasped tight over his mouth before he could spit it out. He retched, air and liquid expelling between Essek’s fingers but not _fast enough._ So Molly swallowed.

Essek let go to wrap his arm around Molly’s side instead, keeping him upright as he choked. It dissolved into heaving breaths, all his weight leaned into Essek. He didn’t get a chance to catch his breath before Essek pulled him along, Molly staggering with each step. 

The drink — the _potion,_ he realized — had been thick and lacked temperature, but now he could feel a warming sensation spreading from his belly and chasing away the ice under his skin. His wounds crawled and then cooled, the labored beating of his heart eased. By the time Essek lowered him into a seat, Mollymauk’s head had stopped spinning. 

He blinked, eyes refocusing as Essek knelt down in front of him. The drow was a mess: his hair stuck out of place, his clothes were torn and sopped with blood. His hands, too, were slick with it, skin drenched red with what was probably Molly’s own blood.   
  
And he was speaking, lips moving and brow furrowed. Molly only caught the tail end of a question, forgetting the words a second later. His mouth opened, tongue rolling out over his lips and not even wincing when he tasted iron. 

“We _just_ took a bath,” was what Mollymauk said. 

The dumbfounded look on Essek’s face made him giggle, a high-pitched noise that began to slip to hysterics. 

“Did you hit your head?” Essek started, only for Molly to laugh harder. 

“Maybe,” he wheezed, “because I have _no_ idea how we got _here_ .” He nearly hit _Essek_ in the head as he gesticulated about the room. It was all white tile, an opaque glass door on each side of the room. Circles of runes were etched and painted into the wall, and the floor had a shallow slant to a drain in its middle, letting the blood ooze down. “I think I blacked out on the way.” 

“Ah,” Essek said. “No, that would be the teleportation. If we had traveled any other way, you would have expired long before we got any help.” 

He reached up, pushing Mollymauk’s coat from his shoulders. Molly let it fall. 

“This room functions as an emergency shower,” Essek continued. “You should get cleaned up.” 

“What about you?” Molly asked, the words slurring together. He went to lift his shirt over his head, hissed as the muscles pulled at a wound. The potion had stopped his bleeding, and was clearing his head, but the damage remained. 

“I can wait.” Essek’s hand shifted towards him, then paused and drew back again. 

“That’s…” He failed to find a good word. “Dumb. What you said was _really_ dumb.” Realizing what he’d been doing, Molly gave him a defeated smile and asked, “Mind helping me outta this?”

Elven ears were fun, he noted. They twitched, folding closer to the sides of Essek’s head, where his hair was buzzed short. Did the stubble tickle his ears when he was surprised? Or was that not surprise but something else — acknowledgement, maybe even interest? Probably not, but Molly could dream. 

Essek cleared his throat and stood. His feet were on the ground, Molly noted. He himself was startled when Essek did lean in, head tilting up automatically, eyes finding lips before the pale pupils that didn’t meet his gaze. Essek’s hands were warm, brushing his sides as he took the hem of Molly’s shirt and lifted. Molly raised his arms, practically holding his breath as Essek slid his shirt over his head, feeling the slow draw of fingers over his skin, tracing a burning line up his ribs before the material was lifted over his head and away.

“Is that why you wear such wide collars?” Essek asked. 

Molly blinked, looking up at him. His ears felt hot. “Uh — huh?”

“Your horns.” Again, Essek looked like he was going to touch one, but pulled back a moment later. “A shirt with a tight collar wouldn’t fit around them.” 

“Oh, yeah. No, if it’s got a tight collar it needs buttons. Your tailor friend made note of that, no worries there.” Molly stood as well. Even with Essek touching the floor, Molly was only at eye level with his throat. It wasn’t a terrible angle, looking up at him. And with Essek looking _down —_ a grin toyed at his lips. “Do you pay attention to the cut of my shirt?” 

Essek only sighed. Molly watched the swell of his chest, the slump of his shoulders. He didn’t know a lot about _anything,_ not about the world he’d been tossed in, not about the people he was chasing, not even about himself. But he knew things he liked, he knew what was _good._ Making people smile was good. _People_ were good. And there were a few different ways to enjoy people, and at least one of them involved pressing his mouth up to Essek’s neck and _feeling_ that sigh against his lips. 

Bloodloss did funny things to his brain, it turned out. Molly swallowed, dragged his gaze up to find Essek staring back at him. Essek wasn’t shy, nor bold. He couldn’t pin Essek down as much of anything, and that was as disconcerting as it was intriguing. It made Molly want to put his hands everywhere they didn’t belong, search until he could find the chink in the armor and peel it away, piece by piece. What did Essek look like when he wasn’t wearing a mask?   
  
He would also settle for learning what he looked like when he wasn’t wearing clothes. Wishful thinking, again. 

“We got off topic,” Molly drawled. “Get undressed. We’ll just shower together, this is a _big_ room. Why do you even _have_ a room like this?” 

“Arcane materials are dangerous,” Essek said, voice clipped. “If an experimental potion begins eating through your flesh, you’ll want to wash it off expediently.” 

“Fair enough.” He snorted. “You could afford to make it look nice, at least! If you’re going to have a giant shower you might as well lean into the luxury and live a little.” 

“I have my own _casual_ bathing facilities,” Essek sighed. And _that_ was a treat if Molly had ever heard one. Essek had been holding out on him. 

Molly took a step forward, intending to hunt for whatever mechanism turned the water on. Instead his knees buckled. Essek threw an arm around him, Molly clinging to keep his balance. He wheezed out a breath, laughing, “I may — _shit,_ I may actually need your help just to shower. I swear this isn’t a ploy.” 

“I didn’t think it was until you said that. Can you stand?”

“I’ll find out.” 

“Sit on the ground if you must.” 

That was what Molly did, sitting on the cool tile and wriggling out of his pants, tossing his remaining garments aside. Undressed, his body was a mess of scabs and dry blood. More scars to add to his collection, but at least he had the story for these ones. 

He watched Essek approach one of the doors, touching a crystal embedded in the nearby wall. Where the rune circles were carved into tile, streams of water began to pour down. “Tell me when the temperature is comfortable,” Essek called. 

Molly stuck a hand under the water, feeling it slowly warm. He waited until it was just on the edge of too hot to say, “Good!” 

He scooted himself under the stream, finding a pleasant pressure behind the water. It ran a rusty brown, blood chipping away from his skin and running down the drain. Essek was shuffling out of his clothes where he stood, and Molly averted his gaze. He wouldn’t step further than he was allowed, and try as he might, he couldn’t get a beat off of Essek.

It surprised him to find Essek approaching. He had a towel in hand, sat down beside Molly and lifted it in an offer. When he nodded, Essek began to draw the towel over his skin, delicate passes of soft material.

_Too_ delicate, really. It made shivers wrack along his spine, his chest feeling too tight for his lungs. If this were just for some heavy petting, he’d be happy to lean into it and purr, but that wasn’t the case. “You don’t like touching people much, do you?” Molly drawled, letting his eyelids droop. 

The motion paused. “I don’t dislike it.” 

“Then put a fuckin’ hand on me. I won’t bite unless you want me to, and you’re not getting anywhere treating me like those fancy plates you’ve got.” 

More readily than he’d expected, a hand clasped on his uninjured shoulder. His skin buzzed under Essek’s touch, the drag of the towel growing more firm, making him hiss through his teeth. He tried to focus on the hand over the pain, how it slid down to lift his arm, how the pads of his fingers weighed on the back of his neck as Essek examined a ragged bite. 

When it was done, and Essek pulled away, he mourned the loss. “You want me to get yours?” Molly offered, catching Essek’s gaze in the corner of his own. “At least the ones you can’t reach.” 

He watched Essek weigh that in his mind. Something about the way he _calculated_ things in his silence pinged a memory, someone else who was stuck in his own head, curled in on himself rather than open up to the world. The memory was there, in his grasp, and then it was gone. 

“That’s reasonable,” Essek murmured at last. Molly watched the stains on the towel clean themselves before Essek handed it over, and turned so his back was to Molly. And again there was that thought of just bending down and kissing the skin where the water ran over his shoulder blade, and maybe parting his lips and seeing if Essek would like him to bite after all. 

Then he set his hand at Essek’s unmarked hip, and he watched his shoulders jump and the breath freeze in his chest. 

“You alright, there?” Mollymauk checked, not removing his hand but ready to. 

“Fine,” Essek said, in that clipped voice again. So Molly began to wash the dry blood from his skin, abandoning the towel nearly at once to just work with his hands. It ran down Essek’s leg, and he murmured a soft ‘ _excuse me’_ as his fingers drew down to the back of his thigh, working quickly and brusquely to return to a spot that Essek’s arm had hidden. 

Hands came up into his hair, where flecks of dry blood stood out against white. Essek made a _noise,_ then, the muscles of his back winding tight but head seeming to tilt _into_ his touch. The sound replayed in Molly’s head as he teased his fingers over locks of hair, dragged nails along stubble. Short and throaty, shaking into a sigh — it was a good sound. 

He was massaging his thumb along the crease of a rib when he realized Essek was shaking. His breaths sucked in too quick and too deep, shuddering on the exhale. Molly’s hand froze in place. “Are you —”

“I am _fine,_ Mollymauk.” The words were jagged things, broken and sharp. Essek yanked away, clambering to his feet. “I will take care of the rest myself, _thank you._ There are towels through there.” He pointed, hand quivering, to the first door in the room.

Mollymauk was silent as he stood and took his leave. 

Towels were located in a cabinet as promised, alongside too-long robes. When Essek emerged, Mollymauk had donned one, black material bound around the waist, hanging open in the front. The drow did not so much as meet his eyes, the towel they’d used now clean and dry and wrapped around his hips for modesty. 

Molly caught Essek’s movements in the edge of his vision. They were jerky and rough, reminded him of something — of a construct of metal and blades, of a prison and children in need and _friends,_ one was an orphan like these children and one was like him and one was like Essek and there was a child with seven voices and black feathers and a knife in one hand and _Welcome to the —_

“Mollymauk.” 

He nearly flinched, but held himself steady. Essek had already moved to the other door, levitating now in a robe that fell to the floor, covering himself completely. When he was bare, when skin was on skin with no layers in between, he shook and he cracked like glass struck so many times. 

Molly followed without a word. 

  
  
  


Essek made himself scarce, after. The day passed, and morning rose. No elven mage was there to literally hover over Molly’s shoulder, nor to show him about the city nor treat him to a day at the spa nor even cook breakfast. 

That last number was just fine in Molly’s book. Essek’s cooking implied he usually didn’t cook in the first place.

The house — though it was more of a tower, round and tall instead of a box — was large and stunningly _empty_ for something so elaborately furnished. Of half a dozen bedrooms, only Molly’s saw use. Without Essek around, he had an entire vacant home to snoop through. 

The first hour was dedicated to finding the most comfortable couch in the building and the one after that to lounging on it naked. Fifteen minutes following that was the hunt for Essek’s bedroom, another five scrounging around for some hairpins, and then longer than he cared to admit spent on his knees trying to pick the lock before he realized it was magically sealed. 

_“Fucking_ wizards,” he growled, and left it at that. 

Lunch was burning the most expensive cut of meat he found in the kitchen and then spotting a basket of strawberries for dessert. He wandered the house with sticky fingers, scanning over bookshelves and pulling one title off before realizing he didn’t care much for reading. A study yielded good, thick paper and pencils and pens that Molly scooped up to carry to the dining room table, uncertain what his hands wanted to do with them but willing to find out. 

An image of a raven etched itself onto the page. It was crude, abstracted. Turned one way, the bird was falling, feet scraping the air to catch the branch that snapped under its weight. Turned the other, it ascended.

_Death,_ he scratched on one end. Then he spun it around and wrote atop the other: _Revival._

The raven had too many eyes. A sick feeling rose in his throat and he crumpled the page in a hand. 

He didn’t know how long he sat there, hand locked around paper, staring into the table. When his mind returned to him, the clock on the wall sat at a different angle. His skin felt like cotton, sand filled his head. It weighed too heavily to the side, feeling that if he let it droop too far his insides would come dripping out his ear. 

Molly slouched in his chair, realizing distantly that his muscles _ached._

What was he doing? 

He should stand up. 

Mollymauk stared at the paper. He should stand up, he told himself. That wasn’t working. He should move his leg, then. It didn’t move. His head tipped just faintly, making his brains swim in his skull. He could hear his vertebrae creak with the motion. A finger, next, the knuckles smoothing out, index finger flexing. Middle, ring, pinky, and thumb followed, and he found himself able to let the paper go, to push himself mechanically away from the table, walk five paces and sink to the ground there. 

He laid there, and then he started shaking, and then he started sobbing.

He didn’t know _why_ he was sobbing. The tears poured off his nose and the breaths left his chest quicker than they came, until he was dizzy and shaking and wheezing into the rug. He couldn’t feel his own skin, he was _empty_ inside, he was _empty,_ he was — he was — 

And then his breath was steady again and he was just lying still, wracked with sudden bouts of tremors for a stretch of uncounted time, until the tremors became less frequent and stopped altogether and his body went lax again. 

Eventually, he would stand, and the clock had inched even further along. 

Molly moved back into the kitchen, craving stew and not knowing why. Something about the idea felt like being surrounded by friendly faces. They didn’t have enough but they made do with what they had. That’s what he told _her_ , the big one, his favorite, his heart. 

Faces poured into his mind, faces and feelings, colors and music and days rolling by. 

Stew was a meal meant to be shared, so when he thought it was almost done, Molly went to find Essek. 

  
  
  


A set of three towers made up Essek’s property, surrounded by a garden Molly _knew_ he didn’t tend to himself. There was a plot of loose earth hidden behind the tower that made up Essek’s actual living space, the shortest of the trio. All three towers were connected by bridges.

Mollymauk paused halfway across one walkway, the cold night air sweeping through his coat. He leaned over its edge, elbows braced on the thin rail to gaze out at the city sprawling around them. In the distance, he could see that house, the one with the glittering tree, the place he’d blindly crawled to and found empty. 

The clouds opened up at night, here, allowing the moon’s glow to bathe the rooftops, the stars matching Rosohna’s lights. 

His ear twitched at the sound of a door opening. He turned, seeing Essek drifting from the tallest tower, the one Molly had been approaching. As the drow locked the door with an arcane word, he turned his head, pausing when their gazes met. 

Molly gave a smile, a faint wave. His voice felt stuck in his throat. 

“Mollymauk,” Essek observed. He moved across the bridge, coming to hover a few feet from Molly’s side. His eyes seemed to catch the moonlight, pupils glinting white. “What are you doing here?”

It took a conscious effort to form words. “Made dinner. Have y’eaten?” He had to clip his own voice, wincing at how _unnatural_ it sounded, like he grated each sound between his teeth before letting it out. 

“... Not yet, no,” Essek said, meaning he’d likely skipped lunch and breakfast, too. Molly just gave a chuckle, raspy, and swatted his leg with his tail. He reached for Essek’s arm — wanting contact, needing to ground himself — to pull him back to the first tower. 

He leaned into Essek, walking slowly to drag out the time he could spend close to another person. The material of Essek’s mantle was surprisingly comfortable, like silk. Molly would happily nuzzle a cheek into it if he didn’t know that would be crossing a line. If he could get skin contact right now, that would be worth the world. But Essek wasn’t offering a hand, he was letting Molly cling to his arm, indulging whatever he thought this was.

As they passed back into the first tower, the scent of cooking meat and spices filled the air. Essek’s stomach rumbled on cue, and Molly laughed. “Glad to have me now, aren’t ya?” He rasped. 

Essek gave him a single laugh. It was better than nothing, he thought, until Essek turned that calculating gaze on him. “Did something happen?”

Molly made a vague noise, finally letting go of Essek to move into the kitchen. “Get some bowls down for me, would ya? You keep them in the _worst_ place.” 

Essek let the question drop. Molly took each bowl from a mage hand, filling each one nearly to the brim. Everything was cut in thick chunks, beef and vegetables in a rich gravy. He stuck a slice of bread in each and passed a bowl to Essek on his way to the table. It wasn’t _pretty,_ but it was everything a meal needed to be: hot and filling and delicious. 

“I didn’t know you could cook,” Essek said, as he sat across from Mollymauk. 

“Turns out I lived with a carnival,” Molly shrugged. “Learned _that_ today.” Essek looked like he was going to dismiss the comment, and then gazed at Molly for a bit and seemed to concede. Molly snickered, then said, “Anyway, things like this are easy to make and can fill a lot of bellies. And when you have spices like what’s in your cabinet, it’s better than the ten-gold meals down the street.” 

He watched, chin in his hands, as Essek gave his bowl a dubious look. “It does _smell_ good,” he said, picking up his spoon and lifting it to his mouth. The ears and eyebrows went up, and before he was even done chewing Essek had another spoonful. 

“Y’see?” Molly grinned. “I’m a _pleasure_ to have.”

Essek only smiled down at his bowl. It was a good look on him. 

They ate in a comfortable silence, broken only for Molly to tease Essek about the dainty way he ate his bread, for Essek to scrunch his nose at him when Molly licked his fingers instead of using a napkin. He got gravy on them on purpose after that, just to watch Essek’s displeasure as he licked them clean. He had to wonder if there wasn’t an interest in the fork of his tongue. 

“You are repulsive right now,” Essek stated. 

Molly clutched his chest in mock pain. “Oh! _How_ could you say that.” He leaned an elbow on the table, grinning as he said, “And why don’t you just use your mage hand, huh? Then you never have to get so much as a _spot_ on your beautiful hands.” He paused in his heckling, then gave a delighted grin. “That started as a joke but I actually need to see this, now.”

“See what?” Essek tore a small piece of bread and dipped it _ever so slightly_ into his bowl, maintaining eye contact as he lifted it to his mouth. His fingers didn’t touch so much as his own _lips,_ and Molly made an affronted noise. 

“If you won’t get your hands dirty, use your magic hand.” Molly wagged his own hand at him. “The thing you got the bowls with.” 

“Why would I do that.” Essek’s voice was flat.

The answer was easy: “To prove you can.” 

He knew he’d won, at that point. Essek sighed, lifting his hands as though in surrender. A swirl of purple magic formed into a third, spectral hand, and Molly rapped his hooves on the ground in anticipation. 

“This is inane,” Essek sighed. 

“This is _entertainment,”_ Molly corrected. 

They both watched as the hand tore a chunk of bread, dipped it in the stew. When the hand lifted up to Essek’s face, looming closer to his half-open mouth — Essek’s will broke. His face pinched, a breathy sound hissing from his lips before he turned his head away. He laughed through his nose, eyes shut and lips spread around a smile, a series of quick exhalations as his shoulders shook. 

_“You can’t!”_ Molly crowed, smacking a palm on the table. The hand dissipated as Essek sputtered, covering his face with his own hand. “You call yourself a wizard!” 

“What was the _point_ of that,” Essek rattled out, losing the fight to hide his smile. 

_“Purely_ for my enjoyment.” His cheeks hurt, he was smiling far too broadly. There was something _genuine_ at last, and it was a smile and laughter and the red tinge to the tips of Essek’s ears. Watching him fight to gather his composure felt like he’d finally gotten a peek under the mask. 

He didn’t even care when he was caught staring, Essek spotting him with his chin propped on his knuckles and a smile on his face. For a long moment, they were both just smiling at one another, the warmth of laughter softening the air. 

Then Molly asked, “Why are you doing this, anyway?”

Essek’s smile waned at the question. He finally seemed to pull himself in order, straightening up in his chair. “What are you referring to?”

“Just. This.” He gestured about, and then to himself. _“Me._ Keeping me in your house, getting mauled, dumping your potions on me. No offense, my friend, but I _know_ you’re not just a charitable soul.” He recalled the bodies pulled into Essek’s magic, crumpled and broken, killed by the man sitting across from him without an ounce of remorse. 

Essek inhaled slowly, as Mollymauk picked up his own bowl and walked to the sink. “That would be an… accurate assessment,” he said, and fell silent. When Molly had washed and dried the bowl, and was setting it on the counter, Essek spoke again. 

“I owe the Mighty Nein a great deal,” he said. Molly turned, and found him hunched over the table. He gave a breathy laugh, said, “Technically, _they_ owe me quite a few favors. But I do not think I will ever claim them. Not how I originally intended to.” 

The silence stretched, and then Essek shook his head, a slow and delayed motion. “In any case. They are… my friends. I care for them. And with the _weight_ of what I owe them, returning someone that they love to their sides feels like I may finally be able to alleviate some of that weight.”

He lifted his head, giving Molly a thin, somber smile. “So, no, I am not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I am simply, blindly hoping to weigh the scales in my favor. I apologize for that.” 

And to his credit, there was a flash of guilt. 

Molly only shrugged, giving him an easy smile. “Listen. My carnival memories are still fuzzy as a lamb, but from what I can make out… you find your family, and you live and die for those people. The rest are just… the rest.” He holds up a finger, adds, “And that doesn’t mean you get to go fuckin’ everyone over along the way. Everything I did, I was doing for those people and for myself. I’ve lied and I’ve cheated and I’ve cut a few throats when I needed to. But I tried to at least put a smile on the faces of the saps I was scamming.” 

He walked to Essek, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Kindness is kindness. As long as you’re not gonna stab me at the end of this, I can appreciate that.” 

Essek was still and quiet under his hand. His head bowed low. Molly ran his fingers through short, white hair. He nearly leaned down to press a kiss to the top of his head before he pulled away. 

“Mollymauk.” 

He paused half in the doorway, looking over his shoulder to where Essek had spun in his chair, gazing back at him. “Yeah?”

Essek pulled in a breath. Let it out, slouching into the back of the chair. “Just… goodnight, Mollymauk.” 

A smile graced his lips. “Goodnight, Mister Thelyss.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mollymauk and Essek are both increasingly enjoyable characters to write. I feel like Molly is a super touchy person, like he really enjoys physical contact. Sex, obviously, but part of that is the intimacy and skin contact and behind able to enjoy another person. So him trying to navigate Essek's conflict with touch, being a man who in stark contrast to Molly has only just gotten _friends,_ let alone people who touch him casually and lovingly... is interesting. 
> 
> What I'm saying is they're both touch starved messes. Also, I swear I'll be able to write a chapter where they're both fully dressed the whole time, I promise. 
> 
> If you wanna contact me, I'm Grimmseye on both tumblr and twitter (which I'm still learning how to navigate). And in any case, thank you all again for the support, I love hearing from you guys and knowing you're enjoying the story. <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick little chapter CW's:
> 
> 1) Mention of hypothetical torture in like, literally the first sentence
> 
> 2) Some discussion of death and the existential horror that comes in with the Luxon Beacons

The scars littering Mollymauk's body weren't a result of torture, as Essek had first assumed. Blood magic was still fairly taboo, but he knew it had its merits. The life force was a powerful source of magic, and drawing blood was safer than drawing directly from the soul. 

Most blood magic came in alteration and control. One could use their own blood to change themself, to augment their power by manipulating the force that defined them. Or, they could take another's essence, claim it and use it to collar its source. Blood made scrying simple and curses into child's play. It was a _very_ useful component, and Essek preferred to stay quiet about his own applications of it. 

What Mollymauk did, he theorized, had to do with sacrifice _._ There was power in that, too. The giving-up, the exchange of something to gain, or to take from another, was a form of magic that dated back to its most ancient roots. Before there was wizardry, druids, artificers, those who learned their craft and honed it through study and training, there were those who made pacts with something else. 

The question then became what Mollymauk was sacrificing _to._ A god, a demon, a devil? Or simply to the Weave itself, using his blood as the guidelines to tangle its threads in new formations.

It was all _very_ exciting.

So was watching Mollymauk, though he was ashamed to admit it. He hadn't asked the tiefling to undress, but Mollymauk had been more than happy to divest himself of his shirt. It left him in loose pants, the material fluttering in the cool wind that blew past. He'd taken up blades in Essek's backyard at Essek's own request. One of his swords was wet with his blood, and illuminated with a radiant glow.

The radiance took a point away from Mollymauk contacting of the negative planes, though Essek knew better than to negate it completely. Tieflings had infernal heritages, it was entirely possible that all the oddities of Mollymauk's body were tied to a single source. It was doubtful, but it was also worth noting.

Essek did just that, writing down his thoughts, knowing he'd be glad to have them later. A stream of consciousness on a page was better than neat and tidy notes that lacked detail and most importantly _context._ He seethed when thinking of the number of projects he'd had to abandon all because he hadn't marked down a late-night thought. 

"You have another of these, you said," Essek prompted. "The other sword does not use radiance?" It was difficult to look at the blade directly with its sunlit glow.

Mollymauk twirled one scimitar with an idle air, catching it in his palm. "Yeah. Ice for that one." 

Essek moved forward, wanting a close look. He muttered a word, burning the first-level slot to sharpen his gaze to magic. "Activate it, please." 

Without missing a beat, Molly obeyed. It made his insides shiver to see the blade come up, cutting neatly into his skin. It was shallow and precise, drawing a scarlet line along the edge of the blade that beaded and dripped over Mollymauk's collar. Molly held it still against his chest for Essek to watch as the blood crystallized, frost crawling over the surface of the blade. It was evocation that brought the ice to the surface, and that brimmed off the blade's glowing twin.

A hint of necromancy burned in Molly's blood, and suddenly Essek had the thought: what would he find if he drew some from Mollymauk's veins, was the blood under his skin inherently magical was he _built_ from necrotic energy, he'd crawled his way out of a grave so what did that _make_ him. Surely he wasn't undead, or the way magic interacted with him would change, the spells _Essek had cast_ on him wouldn't _work,_ but he couldn't count as mortal, either.

So what on earth was Mollymauk Tealeaf? The question had a giddy sensation roiling up in his stomach. 

"What's up with your eyes?" Mollymauk asked, and Essek blinked back to himself. 

It took a moment to remember what he meant. The spell gave his eyes a kaleidoscopic appearance, reflecting colors that shifted madly in the presence of magic. "Ah. I cast a spell on myself, it lets me sense magic in the vicinity. Do you know about the different schools of magic?" 

Mollymauk closed his eyes, arms swinging at his sides so the sword blades dragged in the dirt. "... No," he concluded, with a definitive nod. "I really don't know shit about magic as a whole. I don't know _why_ or _how_ this happens, but cutting myself makes my swords fancy."

Essek remembered the way blood had burst in a gnoll's eyes, blinding them, making the snap of their jaws only seize the air. "Is there anything else you can do?" He pressed. 

Mollymauk gave him a long, withering look, and snorted. "Wizards. They tell you _I know a place_ and then spend the time quizzing you about your blood curses. Yeah, if I cut a bit deeper, I can affect other... _things_. People, monsters, whatever. It's only temporary, but it can be enough in a pinch. If someone's about to get run through with a sword..."

Mollymauk's gaze went distant. His breath hitched, and he lifted a hand, putting it on the ragged scar on his chest. "It might be enough to throw them off." 

Essek let him linger, uncertain what had captured his mind but hoping that maybe this would help unlock the rest of his memories. If he could return Mollymauk to the Nein, safe and happy and just as they'd found him, then maybe he could relieve the weight of his guilt. If bad and good were opposites, then surely if he just did enough good, that would eventually outweigh the bad. 

He knew that logic was flawed. If that were the case, then the teleportations would have eased the pressure. But that was small, not necessarily _easy_ for him but simple enough, something he could do for _anyone._ This was different. This was special. This would mean something, and then he could be forgiven, even if they never knew of his betrayal. 

Eventually, clarity returned to Mollymauk's eyes. He shook himself, his expression pensive and tail coiling. Essek prompted him with a quirk of the eyebrow. Each time this happened, there was the hope that maybe he was fixed at last. And as was true each previous time, it didn't seem to be so — Mollymauk only gave a yawn and stretched his arms out, mindless of the blades he held. "So, yeah. Blood curses. Can't exactly demonstrate them without a target, though." 

Essek sighed, but let himself be swept into a new focus. _In time,_ he soothed himself. Mollymauk would regain his mind in time. Regardless, letting the memories filter back gradually seemed to treat Mollymauk better than forcing the issue, even if Essek was still looking for a more direct way to unlock those memories.

He tapped his own temple, refocusing. What Mollymauk said was true, there wasn't a target to use for a demonstration. _U_ _nless_ — 

"You said the effects were temporary," Essek checked. 

Mollymauk gave a shrug. "Far as I've seen."

"No lasting effects?" The question got him a shake of the head, as expected. Magic usually wore off without a trace. To call Mollymauk's abilities a _curse_ was likely a stronger word than was accurate, too small and too brief to qualify. Curses clung and festered, even a blindness spell was likely to have more effect than what Mollymauk could do — except that it wouldn't come through in a split-second of need, by the time Essek was finished pulling his components and conjuring the sigils in his mind, a sword would be through Mollymauk's chest, through Caleb's, through Jester's. 

Life for life. Perhaps it was a more equal exchange than he'd believed. 

"In that case..." Essek drew the words out, giving himself a moment longer to consider. "Target me." 

Mollymauk's face contorted into bewilderment. "Are you _sure?"_ He prompted. 

"As long as what you said is true, and the effect is only temporary, then yes." Even if the thought did make his skin prickle, remembering how blood spurted around the eyes. He wondered how badly it would hurt. Essek _could_ fight, but it did not mean he was comfortable with pain. Not like Mollymauk.

The tiefling shrugged, shifting his weight between each hoof. "Ready?" He asked. Then he broke out into a sudden grin, saying, "Honestly this is weird. It's always a split-second thing for me, I've hardly had to _think_ about it."

"Would it help if I attempted to strike you?" Essek pulled a curl of ice between his fingers, crystalizing purple magic that was so dark it bordered on black. Mollymauk watched the movement of his fingers, teeth sinking into his lower lip as he grinned. 

"Talented hands," Mollymauk commented, and then cleared his throat. "But uh. You know what? Fuck it, why not. Give me your best shot, Thelyss." 

Mollymauk slunk back, and the shift to his posture held Essek's gaze where it didn't belong. Mollymauk typically held himself lofty and large, filling up the space around him. That meant this change made for a captivating view, to watch as he became a serpentine creature, one who curled one way to the other and then lunged in to strike. He wasn't attacking Essek, though, was only on defense, swaying in place with a hypnotic flow.

Essek watched him, biding his time, a stalemate. He counted the seconds, learned the pattern of Mollymauk's weight, found the point when he'd struggle to shift his movement and _then —_

Crimson splashed in his vision. Essek gasped, a hand flying to his face as the burn began to settle in at the corners of his eyes. Blood trickled from his tear ducts in heavy drops, sticky as they rolled down his cheeks. The sensation was nauseating. 

_Necromancy,_ he recalled. That had been the magic that flashed the second before he lost his vision. He cleaned the blood away with a few casts of prestidigitation, blinking his eyes to find Mollymauk standing much closer with streaks of blood on his own cheeks, and not so much as a speck of frost on his skin.

"Handy trick," Mollymauk commented, as the blood wicked off of Essek's skin. "You mind...?" 

He swallowed his nausea, saying, "Of course." Essek cupped Mollymauk's jaw, sliding his thumb across his cheek to where the peacock feather was inked to clear the blood away. He only realized a moment later he hadn't actually _needed_ to touch Mollymauk.

"Thank you," Mollymauk all but purred, and Essek would swear the tiefling pressed into his hand before he pulled it away. 

He drew in a breath, and as he let it out he forced his muscles to unwind. "Thank _you,"_ Essek returned. "I have some interesting points to consider from that." 

"Oh, yeah?" 

A smirk twitched at the corner of his lips. "You wouldn't understand it." It wasn't meant as an insult. Or, perhaps it was a _bit_ of an insult, but mostly just a statement of fact. 

"True enough," Mollymauk shrugged, and to Essek's disappointment, he didn't bother prying. 

In the distance, the sky began to change. The change in the light was enough to draw both their gazes. The clouds that cast the city in darkness had begun to spiral open, an eye dilating over the Bright Queen's palace to let in a light that made Essek wince even from so far away.

"I suppose we will have to pause this," Essek said, turning away to head into the house. "I prefer not to willingly blind myself." 

"Please think about what you just said," Mollymauk drawled as he trotted up beside him, tail flicking against the back of Essek's calf. 

He had to snort. "You have something of a point, but that was performed as apart of an experiment. Learning, studying, improving, not just..." He stopped himself and just huffed out a breath. 

"Oh?" He could hear the smirk in Mollymauk's voice. "That means something."

Essek considered how honest he wanted to be here. Mollymauk was not a subtle individual — to call him such would likely be considered an insult. In that same vein, Molly had shown little if any regard for social norms and standards, often to a frustrating extent. "I am only frustrated," he said. "What you see there is apart of worship of... something they do not understand, and treat as a deity because of that."

"Lot's of folks don't understand me but I've yet to be treated like a god. _Shame,"_ Mollymauk sighed. "So it's some kinda ceremony? They wouldn't be having a _festival,_ would they?" His expression lit up.

Essek actually felt bad dashing his hopes. "No, it is not the kind of ceremony you would want to partake in," he said. "It is... reverent, to an alarming degree."

"Wrong: I'd _love_ partake in that — just as long as I'm the center of attention." Mollymauk's comment dragged another chuckle from Essek's chest. He'd been laughing more in general, since meeting the Nein. It followed that one of their early members would be much the same. 

Mollymauk continued, "Really, though, what's going on? You conjured a big spooky cloud to keep the sun _out,_ didn't you?"

"You have not heard of our Beacons yet, have you?" Essek prompted. They stepped across the threshold, Essek drawing the curtains that ideally would have only been for decoration. 

"I've heard 'em mentioned?" Mollymauk shrugged. "That's — lemme guess, beacon of light?"

"That is the idea, yes." Essek lowered himself into a chair, while Mollymauk all but threw himself into another. He wrinkled his nose as the furniture creaked under the tiefling's weight. "There are these... dodecahedrons. They were found, and so were _some_ of their properties. They found that when one is _consecuted_ — _I_ would say attuned, but they use _consecute_ — their soul enters this Beacon upon death, to be reincarnated at a later time." 

As Essek explained the beacons to Mollymauk, the tiefling's gaze grew distant. Snippets of conversation pulled to mind, pieces falling into place for Essek. He nipped his own criticisms of the practice short, circling around to say, "That is reason why your friends are so revered in the Dynasty. They —" 

"We found one," Mollymauk interrupted. His voice was distracted. "No. We met in the sewers — Thuron."

The name pinged in Essek's mind, one of those sent to retrieve a beacon. He hummed, quiet and prompting, not wanting to break Mollymauk's reverie. 

"He was killed. The guards took it, but we —" A smile pulled at his lips. "Caleb and Nott, those fucking _bastards._ Can't trust either of them, clever assholes'll stab you in the back at the first sniff of trouble." 

Essek swallowed a protest as Mollymauk trailed into silence. Molly's brow furrowed and he shook his head, a hand coming up to cover one eye. _"Gods,"_ Mollymauk groaned. "So we'd been lugging around your god in a lead box."

"Allegedly," Essek couldn't stop himself from breaking in. He bit back any further words, but the moment had passed. Clarity returned to Mollymauk's gaze. He gave it a moment before continuing, "I have my doubts that it is any sort of deity. I think they need to be studied, not worshiped. By I am in the... extreme minority, in that regard. And I would prefer these words not be repeated."

Mollymauk gave him a crooked, tired smile. "What's a little blasphemy between friends, Mister Thelyss? And honestly, I don't blame you. That reincarnation thing, that sounds like a _nightmare."  
_

The words were alien enough to shock Essek. He cocked his head, leaning forward. "You wouldn't want to be consecuted, given the chance?"

When Mollymauk only scrunched up his nose he added, "Theoretical immortality. Death is no longer an object of fear, as it becomes a delay, not an end. That doesn't appeal to you?" 

By his expression, it definitely did not. Molly's voice was rough when he spoke. "What you said about how the souls... _awaken._ What about the person they _would_ have been? Is it really even their soul, or are they just suppressing someone else? I wouldn't..." Mollymauk pulled his legs up, tail curling around his shins as he rested his chin on his knees. He looked small, in that moment. His voice shook. His eyes were wide. "I don't want anyone else's memories. I don't want anyone else's thoughts _."_

Essek stood up. The movement was sudden enough to snap Mollymauk out of it, leaving him blinking at Essek with wide red eyes. He wracked his brain for something to say, a way to interrupt this descent, and landed on Caduceus' voice: "Would you like some tea?" 

Mollymauk stared at him. Then he laughed, hoarse, and pushed himself to his hooves. "Sure," he croaked. "But there's not a chance in all the hells that I'm letting you make it." 

They were silent as they moved to the kitchen, Essek standing begrudgingly aside to let Mollymauk make a mess of things. He was a good cook, but hardly a considerate one. 

And maybe it was poking the sleeping owlbear, but Essek couldn't deny the questions that lingered on his tongue. "It would, theoretically, still be you," he said. "And who is to say that the person you become is not influenced by the person you were." 

Mollymauk snapped his head to look over his shoulder, pinning Essek to the spot with a near-snarl. With teeth bared and ears pinned low, he looked a beat away from outright snarling in Essek's face. Then the fight drained from him. He breathed a sigh through the nostrils, drawing himself upright as he poured water into a kettle. "I am the last person to yuck anyone's yum," Mollymauk said. "If someone wants to go body hopping to the end of time, they can be my guest. But I want no part of that. It's just not for me." 

Essek hesitated before dipping his head in a nod, even if Mollymauk couldn't see. "That is fair," he murmured. "I do not think it is for me, either."

"You were pretty pushy about it." Molly clicked his fingers at Essek and pointed to the stove. Essek just sighed and touched the runes, igniting a fire for him to set the kettle atop. 

"You _can_ do that on your own. Regardless, I was curious," Essek said, leaning back against the counter. "You are so against having another person's memories, but you want your own back. What is the difference there?" 

"It just is." Molly started taking out the tea — _all_ of it, in tins and bags and boxes. Most were blends that Caduceus had given him, but some came in his grocery order. Essek hardly understood the difference between them all. As Mollymauk worked, his tail lashed. It would betray his agitation if the tension in his voice hadn't already. "It _feels_ different. Right now I'm missing pieces of myself. Those people, your people, the _Nein,_ they're important. I don't know why, but they just _are._ But there was something _before them."  
_

Mollymauk turned, the anger in his face now resembling fear. Dread, maybe, or horror. It left him pale and clutching the edge of the counter, looking at Essek like he expected him to sprout fangs and lung for him. "There was something else, and I don't want it. This is _my_ body now, _my_ life. He gave it up. He doesn't get to take it back." 

Essek remembered the haunted sheen in Molly's eyes when he'd called him by a different name.

_Mollymauk.  
_

_Lucien._

"If that is true," Essek said, giving up on any further inquisition, "then you have nothing to worry about. He is... whoever he is. And you are you. You cannot _become_ him."

It didn't work that way. He was making a statement with no backing, barely even understood what it was Mollymauk feared so terribly. But whatever he'd said, it seemed to work, with Mollymauk's shoulders going loose and a sigh expelling from his chest. "Yeah," he puffed. "Yeah that makes sense. Good thinking, Mister Thelyss."

"I am... happy to be a help to you." 

And though it was said with a dryness in his voice, Essek found the words rang true. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, it's been a while. Getting cr back helped boost my inspiration, but it was checking back here and scrolling through the comments again that really got my _motivation_ going. Thank you all so much for the support you've offered. And as usual, please let me know what you think, <3


	7. Chapter 7

Messages from the Nein — more specifically, from _Jester_ — always brought with them a sense of dread. Any amount of joy or amusement or frustration he felt at her jabbering in his mind could always be accompanied by the undercurrent of foreboding as he remembered exactly what he had done. Sometimes he grew convinced they'd found out, a spiral of paranoia leaving him sick and shaking and running through contingencies as madly as a demon's thrall —

Counterspell for Caleb, though maybe Jester would earn it first. They would be the ones to harm him with magic. Caduceus would have to be put down swiftly, an illusion might be enough to hold him in place but then he wouldn't be able to handle the rest — Yasha would fall easily to control, he didn't know her as well and wouldn't suffocate on his guilt if he pried her mind apart and made her into a puppet one more time, trained that sword upon the rest — though again, maybe that was best reserved for Caleb, even if he was likely to shrug it off with the same teachings Essek had faced to turn that fire against his friends had nearly been the end of them before — 

No, running would be his best option. Running, hiding. A spell to hold them still or stunned to grant him his escape. Alone, Essek could maybe pick a few of them off, but at the end of the fight he would be dead on the ground. It was best if he just ran. 

And now he had someone to take with him just in case they tracked him down. 

But every time it was just Jester's voice, overly-friendly as she always was, and the panic calmed into confusion or mirth or exasperation, all depending on the day. Today the dread remained, as he slipped down the stairs to where Mollymauk was lounging across the floor, scratching images onto paper with his tongue half poked out between his teeth. His gaze lifted to Essek's approach, tail curling up into the air. It was a _hello,_ he'd determined, remembering how Jester's did the same. 

"The Nein are going to be returning," Essek told him. 

It was a curious range of emotions that darted across Mollymauk's face, and none of them looked good _._ When Mollymauk did not fill the silence, Essek continued, "I am going to be teleporting them to their next destination. It is a visit, not an extended stay." 

The silence continued, Mollymauk sitting upright but not speaking, his tail coiling over the floor. Essek hesitated for a moment, then asked, "Do you want me to tell them you're here?" 

It was enough to get Molly's gaze to refocus. "That's an option?" He raised his eyebrows. 

"Not forever," Essek gave a wan smile. "But for now, if you do not feel ready to meet them again, you do not have to." 

"Huh." He puffed out a breath, laying back down in time with the exhale, until he was splayed out across the rug and staring up at the ceiling. "Maybe. Yeah, you know what? Let's call that the plan until I say otherwise." 

"Just be sure to tell them you wanted this when they _do_ find out," Essek said, with dry humor. "I do not want them to think I've lied to them." And certainly not to _know.  
_

Time was running low. The exchange approached, and then it would be over. The mystery could fade, never to be solved. The Nein didn't need to know, and would never find out. Eventually the guilt would fade. There was hope on the horizon, but he had expected the feeling to be much warmer than he found it. 

"They _will_ be here soon," Essek added, after a beat. "It will take a while to complete the circle and travel across the city, but —" 

"You won't even know I'm there." Mollymauk rolled over to get to his hooves, gathering up his supplies — they'd made a run to an art store to get more materials for his cards. 

With Mollymauk gone, it left Essek in pensive silence as he waited on the Nein. Once upon a time, he'd planned to call in a favor or three, send them in a few separate directions to throw them and anyone else off his trail, use the idiots who'd thrown a wrench in his plan to put the pieces back into place. It would be smart, to cover his tracks, to let them believe the trail had gone cold. Now, he couldn't bear to further his own deception. He made empty threats, promising some dreadful task with no intention of following through. At this point the farce was embarrassing to keep up.

It would be over soon. He only needed to wait for the Peace Talks to conclude. Ideally, whatever they were doing now would eat up the time left over, let them trudge back home to where Essek could finally breathe in the same room as them, to where he had their friend safe and sound, to a brand new day where the past could be left to rot and Essek could — 

— _what?_ Sever himself from the Assembly? Impossible. He'd already done too much to break ties now. If he turned his back on their research, then what was the point of any of this? And if he couldn't turn his back, then the deceptions would continue. He would betray the Nein, again and again and again, each new falsehood tightening the noose he'd placed around his own neck. 

Ice-cold dread splashed down his back. He clasped a hand to his mouth, wheezing through his shaking fingers. _Then what,_ his mind demanded. _Then what?  
_

When the Nein arrived, Essek had cleaned himself up, his guilt and his panic sealed behind a cool facade. They came in their usual whirlwind of chaos, and he wondered if Mollymauk was listening in as they chattered among themselves, talking over each other and at him as always, a trait that had gone from infuriating to only a mild annoyance. Any time their jabbering grew to be too much, spiked anger in his chest, some part of his heart reminded him that he _liked_ these people, and the resentment couldn't take hold. 

"Hey. _Hey."_ It was Beauregard's abrasive voice that broke him from his thoughts. She lifted a quizzical eyebrow. If there was anyone to be wary of, aside from Caduceus, it was her. Her eyes were dangerously sharp. "You get stuck up there?" She asked, pointing upwards. 

Essek looked up, pausing for a long moment. He knew he was wrong even as he asked, "Upstairs?" 

"No the — the sky, the _clouds,_ you know." She waved a hand. When Essek didn't grant her an inch, she blustered, "Head in the clouds? Stuck with your head in — never mind." She deflated with a sigh. Rubbing her temples, Beau said, "You're being weird, what's up with that?" 

And _that_ was exactly why he was wary of her.

It would be safest to just brush it off. He could blame it on a project, on stress, on other responsibilities. That would be safe, that would be _smart,_ but curiosity, as always, was present to drag him down. 

"Something you asked a while ago stuck with me, that's all," Essek told her. He brushed his hair up and back, out of his face. "Nott asked me about a — Lucien? Molly?" He struggled not to tack the _mauk_ onto the end. It had been Jester who gave that name, hadn't it? _Molly had a cult.  
_

He should probably ask Mollymauk about said cult. 

It took Essek a moment to notice the others had gone quiet. A few of them looked to Yasha, whose fingers were squeezed tight around her own arms. 

Of course. He instantly realized how idiotic he'd been — they still thought Mollymauk was dead.

"Yeah," Beau said, with the kind of casual tone that was audibly forced. He didn't know the details of Mollymauk's death, not even how long ago it had been, but the Nein had arrived without him quite some time ago. They'd likely grown used to the sting, even if the tension in Beau's body was unmistakeable. "He used to travel with us, and then one day he died. Was killed. He — yeah. You know something?" She glared, defensive in the same manner as a dog that bared its teeth when it was hurt. 

Essek ignored the question. "I just wondered who he was," he murmured, voice soft. "I... apologize if I've stumbled onto a sore subject." 

If anything, it was just _tense._ They hadn't seemed to mind the conversation much when they brought it up, but it seemed that from an outsider, the question was ill received.

"He was..." Nott piped up with some hesitance. "Kind of a dick, honestly?" , It sent a ripple through the Nein. Yasha tensed, the rest looking torn between amusement and discomfort. "He'd make people squirm on purpose and had a _lot_ of sex when he was rooming with Fjord." Her voice took on a hesitant laugh. "Like. A _whole lot —"  
_

"Yes, yes, but let's not speak ill of the... departed." Fjord's interjection petered into something soft. "He _was_ a friend, you know."

"Of course!" Nott gave him a halfhearted glare. "I know that, obviously! I loved him as much as the rest of you. He was an — an _asshole,_ and the fact he's dead makes us all act like that isn't true. But I loved him." Her shoulders sagged. "He danced with me, remember? That was fun." 

The silence stretched. It was, of course, Jester who broke it in the end, with a bright, "Molly knew things!" Even through her cheer, there was a watery quality to her smile, while Beau winced. "When we first met, he told my fortune. Look!" She whisked a hand into her back, pulling out a deck of cards. She fanned them out for Essek to see, revealing that they were incomplete, most of them still blank. Several held a different art style from the rest, and the imagery presented made it easy for Essek to guess she'd picked up the legacy. Her art was actually quite impressive when she wasn't desecrating holy sites. "He made these himself!" She beamed. "He was — he was still making them — he —" 

Essek's heart jumped. Her smile was broad, but tears were welling up in her eyes as she spoke, her voice starting to crack. He floundered, a hand lifting and hesitating in the air. Beauregard was already sweeping forward, putting an arm around her shoulders to pull her close. 

"He was full of shit and every other word out of his mouth was a fucking lie," Beau bit out. "But he made people happy. And then he died." She clenched her jaw. "And I'm sure he's lording it over us somewhere." 

The truth had become a jagged thing. It wasn't such an easy secret to hold onto now, barbed with thorns and drawing blood. Not his own, but _theirs,_ it wrapped tight around their throats and threatened to slice. So Essek held his tongue, watching as the Nein recovered from the hurt he'd returned to them. Yasha turned and left, Jester breaking away from Beau to give chase. The rest remained in place, and Essek's gaze panned past Caduceus and to the other one of them who hadn't said a thing — to find Caleb with his eyes shut as he ground his thumb against his forehead. 

There was the impulse to question again, wanting Caleb's opinion. What did _he_ think of the tiefling, as ostentatious as he was, far too bright and too loud and yet...

The question would be out of place. And it was inane, regardless. The Nein clearly loved him. There was no reason to question their deeper bonds. But gods if he didn't want to know what the two of them had looked like side by side. 

A flush rose to his cheeks, half embarrassment and half outright shame. Whatever depraved curiosity had seized him, this was not the time for it, when he'd just reawakened his friends' grief. It was _wrong._ And gods help him, Essek _wanted_ to be better for them. 

But he couldn't be. Not yet, and maybe not ever. That was something to calculate later. For now, it was just another feeble tally in paying back his debt to them all, as he gathered them up to whisk them away. Whatever he earned was nullified at once, with Jester spending paints of magic beyond even the best conjuration caster, just to make him a parasol. She could use those to open holes in reality, and she had wasted her paint to shield his eyes from the light. 

Essek returned home with a burning in his eyes, and he wished it was thanks to the sun. 

Working with the Cerberus Assembly did not mean Essek _liked_ them. In return, he knew all too well they did not like him.

They _needed_ each other, however. Mutually assured destruction was an excellent motivator. So as scheduled, Essek strode to the full length mirror in his bedroom. He'd locked and warded the room, so that no sound could pass beyond that door, no nosy tieflings could stick a hairpin in the lock. What Mollymauk was even doing wasn't of much concern right now, not when he'd spent the day scrambling through his reports to make sure he had all the right details in place, what to offer and what to withhold, what questions to ask as well. 

The stern form of Ludinus Da'leth shimmered into view. As usual, Essek's gaze was drawn to his eyebrows, elaborately shaped caterpillars that they were. He missed the man's greeting entirely, but offered one of his own, coolly polite.

It was little more than the usual exchange of information. "I will be meeting you as usual, in the guise of Dezran Thain," Essek said, as they'd already established half a dozen times before. 

"Yes, yes," Ludinus sighed. "We are all quite aware of the plan by this point. Do _not_ mess it up, Thelyss." 

Essek's gaze was cold. "Thus far my pieces of the operation have run perfectly. I've had no annexes gallivanting with demon cults thus far." 

Ludinus' face pinched, to his gratification. "I'm sure there is much you could tell me about demon cults," he returned, and Essek hated to feel his lips peel back in a snarl. He schooled his expression, fingers curling into fists beneath his robe. 

"After all," Ludinus continued, "you reported attacks by gnolls within the city."

Essek paused, then frowned. "How did you know that?

"Previously, we had seen similar activity in the Empire," Ludinus reported, "though not nearly so dramatic. We have good reason to believe they may be followers of Yeenoghu." 

It wasn't really an answer, Essek noted, but let it slide. Yeenoghu was the demon prince of hunger, worshiped primarily by gnolls. Some even believed that gnolls were all demons sent by him to the Material Plane, but some also believed drow all worshiped Lloth. It would, unfortunately, explain the near-feral behavior of Xhorhasian citizens. The Nein had been dealing with demons — or at least _fiends —_ for a long time, after all. 

"Regardless, it's being handled," was all Essek said, getting a grunt in return. "If that is all?" 

"It is. Farewell."

The mirror blurred an instant later, before returning to a reflective surface. Essek stared at himself, stiff and clean and not a hair out of place, and let out a long groan as he rested his forehead against the glass. 

_And then what.  
_

He couldn't cut ties with the Assembly. He couldn't admit his sins to the Nein. So then what. One side was going to go up in flames and burn the other with it, and where did that leave Essek except as a wretched creature, sobbing that he'd been burned after reaching into the fire. 

Returning Mollymauk was not going to relieve his guilt. He knew that. The lie had been a pleasant fantasy while it lasted. 

Essek stepped away, taking a glance at the clock. The entire day had slipped by in a blink, and he hadn't eaten a thing. Nor had he heard from Mollymauk. Perhaps they could find a place to sit down and eat dinner, with Essek too tired to cook and too hungry to wait. 

Mollymauk was not in the house. The suspicion settled in when he checked the tiefling's bedroom and the living room, and then the kitchen for good measure, and didn't find so much as a spaded tail. It was when he'd trekked around the house calling for him that Essek felt dreaded confidence take hold: Mollymauk had left. 

A string of curses followed Essek out the door. He grabbed a lock of fur out of his bag, burning it to ash as he cast his senses out for Mollymauk's presence. The ley lines that twined through the air reverberated in response, empty of his target. 

The cabbie he hired was more than a little confused at Essek's request, but happy to comply for the pay it would earn him. They marched up and down the streets of Xhorhas, combing through that web strand by strand. The spell ran out and he cast it again, irritation building at the sheer waste of magic _._ It only spiked when the spell reacted to its target.

The spell picked up on Mollymauk within a crowded bar. Essek grimaced as he handed over a handful of coin, waiting for the cabbie to trot away before he burned yet another spell. A drow who did not look nor dress like Essek Thelyss walked inside with a sour look on his face, eyes cast about the bar in search of the easiest person to find. 

Mollymauk stuck out, but the tones of his skin actually gave him a vague chance at blending in. Searching for tails wouldn't do him much good, as some elves did have them, tufted instead of spaded at their tips, so it was horns Essek looked for instead.

He found the tiefling at a booth of the bar, seated in the lap of an elf with a hand rested on his cheek. There was a woman at his side, leaning against the first elf to murmur something in his ear, the two speaking conspiratorially as Mollymauk's smile grew broader, leaning away from the man to catch the female elf's lips. 

It was a filthy kiss. Essek could _see_ their tongues, an outraged blush rising on his cheeks. He twirled a wire tight around his forefinger, hissing, _"Mollymauk, what in the_ hells _are you doing?"  
_

Molly's head twitched. Essek voice was a growl as he added _"You can respond in a whisper."  
_

The tiefling relaxed back into the lap of the male elf, tipping his head back on his shoulder and toying with his hair. _"I'm having fun. You're free to join."_ By the movement of his head, Essek knew he was searching the bar. His eyes slid over Essek, not recognizing the disguise. _"Where are you?"  
_

_"Looking directly at you."  
_

It took a beat for their eyes to lock. Molly smiled, murmured something to his _companions,_ and gave them each a kiss on the lips before sauntering his way across the bar and towards Essek. "I didn't think you were the type!" He grinned. "If I'd known, I would have invited you." 

"I'm not," Essek said, voice terse. "I was _looking_ for you because you left without saying a word." 

"And you can just track me down?" He looked alarmed at first, then just sighed. _"Fucking_ wizards. Well, apologies for the scare, Mister Thelyss, I'll be sure to at least leave a note next time, yeah?" He cocked an eyebrow. 

"You should not be here at all," Essek hissed. Mollymauk's brow furrowed. "Aside from the blatant _danger_ of a tiefling wandering around the city, it's depraved." 

Molly blinked at him. "Huh," he said. "You're full of surprises today, Mister Thelyss. It's a little depraved, sure, but it's not _bad."_

"That —" Essek drew a breath and let it out with a huff. He'd been taught to be careful with such contact. Representing Den Thelyss meant having all eyes on him. Any amount of childish irresponsibility would be seen and remembered. "That is fair," Essek admitted, before his voice sharpened again. "I misspoke, but I still will not have you bringing some..." He waved a hand, " _venereal disease_ back to my home. I am not paying a cleric because you played with the wrong person." 

"Fucked," Mollymauk corrected. "Had sex with. Let's use our adult words." He gave a smirk, and in that moment Essek rather disliked Mollymauk Tealeaf. His glower must have translated, because the tiefling put up his hands a moment later, "But, alright. I'll be safe about it, pinky swear." 

He dropped one hand, sticking the little finger out on the other. Essek just stared at him until Mollymauk gave a, "Oh for the love of — _seriously?"_ Then he grabbed Essek's hand, bending his pinky up to hook them together. "Pinky swear! Like this! I didn't even have a childhood and I know what this is!" 

"I didn't have _much_ of one, either," Essek frowned. "I know what it is, but it seems... inane." 

"Gods, you're so _sad,"_ Mollymauk breathed, looking aghast. "Are you sure you don't want to come back with me? You need to _relax,_ and they like group stuff —" 

"I am _fine,"_ Essek hastily interjected. " _Thank you,_ Mollymauk, but I am _quite_ fine."

"What if it was just me, then?"

The offer was stunningly sincere. It was blunt and honest, a genuine question, Mollymauk meeting his gaze with his head tipped to the side. 

Essek swallowed. 

Did he want to kiss Mollymauk Tealeaf? Yes, far too much. He wanted more than he should, and not just from Mollymauk himself. But it would be wrong, wouldn't it, when Mollymauk's mind was still piecing itself together, when everything Essek presented of himself was deception. 

So he said, "No." And Mollymauk just shrugged, seeming perfectly unbothered. "But —" He sighed. He knew his irritation was born of jealousy, and now that he'd just turned down exactly what he wanted, he had no leg to stand on. "Just keep i _t_ subtle along with safe, _please._ I have a reputation, and you are beginning to extend to it. If the Shadowhand is seen with a tiefling with a reputation for being..." He grasped for a word. 

"Slutty?" Molly suggested. 

" _Promiscuous,"_ Essek said. "It will reflect badly." 

Mollymauk stretched his arms over his head, and Essek decidedly did not look at how his muscles flexed with the motion. "Alright," he shrugged, going lax again. "That's a tall order, Mister Thelyss, but I'll see what I can do." 

"You will?" He blinked. 

Molly gave him a bemused look. "Yeah? You asked, so, sure."

"Fjord said you were a terrible roommate," Essek said. "You would invite people into your shared room without his input."

"Hey, he never asked me to stop! I think." Molly pondered it for a moment before seeming to give it up. "Ah, whatever. At the very least I'm respecting your wishes this time." 

Essek shook his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I suppose that will _have_ to do." 

"So if we're done...?" Mollymauk looked expectantly, and Essek sighed as he waved his dismissal. He watched the tiefling rejoin his partners, sinking back into the booth, and turned away before he could witness anything unsavory. 

His life had become a stack of contradictions. The Nein were his friends, and yet he betrayed them at every turn. He wanted nothing to do with the Assembly and yet couldn't sever his ties. He wanted... _something_ from Mollymauk Tealeaf, and refused it when it was offered. Essek's heart was heavy as he made his way home, the house quiet and empty and yawning. 

Today, he was jealous of the other peoples of Exandria. Humans and halflings and tieflings, nearly anyone who wasn't an elf, they got the luxury of sleep at the end of the day. At least they could escape their thoughts when they rested. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Essek gives off strong ex-Catholic vibes, which I've now realized filters into how I portray his view on sex/sexual desire. 
> 
> Anyway!! Wow!! The reception to last chapter was delightful, thank you so much for the kind words. I'm glad you guys are still enjoying the story, I hope you'll continue to do so! Your feedback makes me really want to get the next chapter up in good time <3
> 
> As usual, you can find me on tumblr or twitter (I'm far less active on twitter) as "Grimmseye".


	8. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's got some content warnings up in here.
> 
>   
> !  
>   
>  **Hover over this for the Content Warnings**   
>   
> !  
>  Alternatively, if you're on mobile, click on the end notes for this chapter's CWs.

When the Nein arrived, Mollymauk listened from his bedroom. 

Beauregard, Caleb, Fjord, Jester, Nott, Yasha. The names pounded in his head, nails that refused to be hammered down. One stood out stronger than the rest, the ache deeper, the emptiness more terrifyingly complete, but not one passed without a sharp stutter in his heart. 

He died. He had, hadn't he? Somehow the thought had never really, truly clicked. He had been cold and still in the ground, festering amid the worms. Had they made a home of him? Burrowed into his body while the mud dripped into his mouth, boring holes through his flesh and eating at his innards, ants and centipedes all marching their unending parade through the rot underneath his skin, thousands of legs too small to feel and yet there was a crawling deep inside.

He knew what dead bodies looked like. He felt liked he'd created a few himself. The swords he carried had tasted blood that was not his own, and a prickle on his tongue told Mollymauk that _he_ had as well. His body had, at least. This body had done many things that Mollymauk had not. Maybe it was his Other, the echo that had given up his skin, who had brought his teeth to another's flesh to drink their life away. 

He gagged, both from the sudden stench of copper he _swore_ he could smell, and from the images it painted. He knew what dead bodies looked like. Molly's hands flew to his belly, prodding at the skin to make sure it felt as it should, a layer of fat softening the muscle underneath, currently smooth and flat as he hadn't eaten a thing. The Nein's presence left his stomach twist into knots too tight to let him get a proper meal. What should have mattered was that his belly was firm, where a corpses would be spongey-soft and bloated with gas, and yet it did not comfort him. 

He was alive, but he couldn't convince himself of this. Molly scrabbled at his own jaw to find the pulse beneath it, fluttering far too quickly.

A heartbeat meant life. A beating heart meant pumping blood and _blood_ was the essence of the _life_ was what rooted the _soul_ to the _body._ That's why they studied it: the blood. That's why they spilled it over their blades and that's why _he,_ the _Other,_ that _Lucien,_ had drank it down, because endless blood meant endless life and an immortal sustained on the blood of those beneath them was _unto a god —  
_

Molly didn't realize he was scratching at his arms until he felt himself prick into a vein. The stinging made him wince, suddenly registering the scores of red lines he'd dragged over his forearms, and the one small arc of crimson where a nail had dug too deep. 

His throat worked in a swallow. Blood was life. If he bled, he was alive. If he breathed in fresh, clean air, from the open window, then it meant that he wasn't buried feet under the earth with only worms and fungal spores for company. 

The voices downstairs went quiet. Mollymauk went still, straining to catch a word. The thought that they were gone should have been a relief. It meant that he could move at last, emerge from this tiny, claustrophobic room that might as well be a _coffin_. 

And it meant he was completely alone. 

A panic caught his chest, Molly scrambling to his feet. "Essek!" He shouted. They were gone, weren't they, so it was safe to come out now. They were gone, but so was _he,_ so Mollymauk was all alone with no one to distract him from the gaping wound underneath his ribs. 

_"Essek!"  
_

No response. Trembling hands wrenched the door open. He thudded down the stairs and nearly toppled in his frenzy. He needed to find Essek. He needed to find _someone, anyone,_ he needed to _not be alone_ , he needed something to fill the empty void in in his chest where a soul was meant to be so he could stop feeling so _Empty.  
_

His skin crawled for contact, and he hugged himself tight. No one was there. 

Eventually, Mollymauk would slink to a couch and find the thickest, heaviest blanket in the house. He hunkered down in the cushions with it, the soft texture until his fingers grounding and the pressure even better. A warm, living, breathing body was what he needed, but this would work. This would have to be enough. 

Essek did return, sooner than expected. He had a parasol in his hand, a lacy pink thing. Mollymauk didn't know if it was relief or despair he felt when the drow strode right by, eyes so firmly fixed on the item in his hands that he hardly even noticed the tiefling on his couch — let alone his trembling. Mollymauk did not miss Essek's own.

If he'd been here five minutes prior, Mollymauk might have scrambled to him. Even now, after catching his breath so just the smallest of tremors seized him between the seconds, he was starving for contact. It would be so warm tucked up against someone else's body. He wanted Essek to hold him. Hell, he would hold Essek himself, the gods knew the drow needed a fucking _hug._

Mollymauk would do a lot with Essek, really. He'd happily take any of it. Just a hand, fingers laced together. They were clever hands. Some memory — his own, not the Other's — told him that wizards were good with their hands. Long, nimble fingers, trained to weave odd shapes in the air or paint them in their books. He'd love to just play with his fingers and watch how each section folded in, drag his own over the protrusions of the knuckles and maybe lift Essek's hand to kiss each one. 

Kissing Essek was the next thought that flitted into his mind. He let it come and savored it, happy to entertain a fantasy, especially in favor of the panic that seized him before. Essek didn't strike him as one who spent a lot of time in bed with someone else. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that the man had never kissed at all. Either way, Mollymauk thought it would be hesitant at first. It was easy to imagine how Essek would falter, breath fanning out across his lips. Mollymauk would have to cup his face, press slow, chaste kisses to his lips, again and again until the wizard followed suit. Wizards were curious things, and Essek had an attractive dedication to his work. He was sure that he'd get his bearings in no time. 

And then there was further. Picking that mantle away, taking a moment to admire him in the garments that clung close to his body. Molly had averted his eyes in the spa, but like this he would be allowed to drink it in. First with his eyes, and then with his hands, his teeth, his tongue. He wondered how Essek would _sound._ Soft whimpers, maybe. Or could be be noisy once his restraint cracked in half, crying out and panting. Or low growls and hisses of pleasure, his quiet intensity taken to bed. 

It would all be music to his ears. But while he knew Essek looked at him — he wasn't _blind —_ somehow he was sure that Essek wasn't going to act on that any time soon. 

But the craving wasn't going to go away, either. Now that the thought was lodged in his head, Mollymauk knew what he wanted so badly. It barely scraped against arousal, just _desire_ making him ache. He just wanted to spend a night with the reminder he wasn't alone. 

Maybe he'd take a tour around the city, tomorrow, and see if he couldn't find someone to share his bed.

It had been more than enough. Hands on his body to sooth the crawling under his skin, warmth and heat and pressure that became the soul focus of his mind, and a sleep so deep there was no room for nightmares of blood and burials. And with a clear head, Mollymauk came to a conclusion:

Essek Thelyss was difficult to read, and that both impressed and worried him. 

Mollymauk was a liar. Spinning tales was as easy as it was fun, and while he might not have been the most charming of trinkets, he knew how to walk the line that bordered absurdity, keep a story just strange enough for someone to _want_ to believe his words were true. The deeper sort of lie, he could manage that as well _— deception,_ not just tall tales, the kind of words that sang of danger in their wake. 

Essek wasn't necessarily a liar, as far as Mollymauk could tell, but he was certainly a deceiver. There were gaps in his story, things he didn't like to talk about, subjects he was quick to change. 

There was a heavy guilt that followed in his shadow after the Mighty Nein's departure, one that grew deeper as the days passed. Mollymauk wouldn't care about _lies_ — whatever person Essek didn't want to be, that was his business. Molly didn't care for other people's baggage. It was dead weight, best left behind so you could keep moving forward without so much as a glance over the shoulder. But whenever Mollymauk brought up the Nein, he could no longer miss the way that Essek's breath caught, his words stalled, his face pinched. 

Essek had a good mask, but Mollymauk was even better at prying them off than he was at wearing his own. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter CWs: Dissociation, fear/sensation of bugs in the body/under skin, description of corpses and decomposition, accidental self-harm
> 
> A bit of an interlude, here! Mollymauk is not okay,
> 
> This also goes into my HC that Molly is a very tactile person because of the circus, and that sex is one of his ways of fulfilling that craving. He also just likes it, but hey... if you feel like a dead man walking, it's a good way to feel alive. 
> 
> Thank you for your continued support. <3 We're coming up on the Peace Talks soon, so I'm debating with myself on if I wanna put something between that or get right into things. Regardless, please let me know what you think, your words are what keep me motivated.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very very light editing. I'll go back and read later but it's been hitting triple digits in temperature and my brain is mush.

Essek goes silent in the days leading up to the peace talks. It's an affair Mollymauk only faintly understands, static-filled memories informing him of _something,_ some tension in the air of impending violence and fear. There's a memory of his own voice urging them to _get out, there's a reason he doesn't want a Name, attention is fine but being known is not.  
_

This is going to determine the immediate fate of two countries. The lives of their soldiers, thrown to the slaughter for a cause Mollymauk could not comprehend, could be saved. And that was good, yes, in a distant and grand sort of way. It was too big for him to fit it into a scope he could understand.

Essek, he was sure, knew that scope, and yet Mollymauk doubted that was the source of his stress. There was something else under the surface, that connected to the way his ears started to droop when the conversation swung to the Mighty Nein. More concerning, though,was the fact that Essek had started to disappear. Where Mollymauk had previously heard a muffled voice from the tower's door, there was now silence, the kind that emerged from an absence of a person to be quiet. By the time Mollymauk took notice of it, the absences were regular enough to be timed.

Let the world feel a shudder wrack its spine when Mollymauk Tealeaf produced the beginnings of a plan.

It would never go beyond those beginnings — he wasn't the _planning_ sort. Essek disappeared, which meant that his room was empty and unguarded, which meant that if Mollymauk was going to break into his space, it would have to be now.

He didn't even wait to be sure. A minute spent double checking was a minute sooner Essek would return, so the moment that silence made itself known, Mollymauk was already crossing the tower's bridge. He checked the lock for anything that would explode if he tried to pick it, found nothing, and grinned to himself as he slipped a homemade set of thieves tools into the slot.

Molly's triumph was short-lived. The hook found nothing, no tumblers to leverage into place. It was like the inside was perfectly smooth, but when he tried the knob, it refused to turn.

A grimace stole his face. _"Wizards,"_ he growled. A vague sense of someone disappearing in the middle of a fight, off to _who the fuck knows where_ — but that hadn't been a wizard, had it, no, that was the odd drawling voice that asked after Molly's swords and he didn't feel a lick of guilt spinning a lie on the spot because it made relief light in Fjord's eyes and wasn't that a good thing, better to comfort someone with a lie than torment them with a meaningless truth.

Fjord. Taller than Molly with a frame that suggested a strength he really didn't have. Sneaking up behind him and dunking his head under the water and _laughing_ as the man began to sputter, _that'll show him._ Warmth in the chest as — _that_ was the wizard, yes, the one who froze amid fire and didn't even know how to skim off the top — as someone offered a gorgeous sword to him that let him flit out of one space and into another. _"Mister Mollymauk."  
_

"Mister Caleb."

The words fell from his lips, thick as honey. His hand slipped from the doorknob, and he felt a soreness in his palm. How long had he been gripping it?

Mollymauk shook his head to clear it, grinding his thumb against his temple. Door was locked, so —

Windows. He could always get in through a window.

The brick of the towers were uneven enough to climb, though falling from that height without a net to catch him would not end well. Right about now he would kill for a sword that let him teleport. Or Nott's feather spell to catch his fall. Yasha, who he knew would throw herself off a ledge to catch him, and be just fine when she hit the ground.

His chest felt tight, the aching loneliness clawing to the surface. Suddenly he regretted not telling them, these people who were blurred in his mind but make the space beneath his ribs feel hollow.

He drew a sharp breath. The Nein meant something to him. Essek, no matter how much Molly liked the man, was doing _something_ to harm them.

The first brick was cold under his hand. He wasn't the strongest individual, but he knew how to climb. Molly kept himself level with the bridge so if he _did_ lose his grip, he wouldn't fall all the way to the ground below. His muscles ached far sooner than he would prefer. He might have to start doing strength training on top of his stretches. But his hooves took to the narrow brick, his tail working as a counterbalance, and it was only in the moments where he had to ease away from the safety net of the bridge that his pulse really began to race.

The window was positioned where a drop would send him directly to the ground. Much as Molly wanted to stop and catch his breath, freezing now wasn't an option. He dragged in slow breaths to try to calm his palpitating heart. Hand then foot then hand then foot. Sweat on his fingers made his grip slide, panic washing cold over his back as he seized the brick and panted against it. The pitching sensation continued, his body screaming at him for this foolishness. He'd dug himself out of the dirt twice only to break himself from a fall. It likely wouldn't even kill him, just crush his bones, sternum crunched into his lungs for him to bleed out his mouth until he either expired or Essek returned to find him.

He nearly sobbed when he felt the cold of the window against his fingertips. Molly braced his hand against it, palm sliding over the glass with a squeak. Nausea rose in his throat. Did the window even open? Was it locked, or just stuck from disuse?

Grinding his teeth, Mollymauk braced as much weight as he dared against that hand, trying to muster the leverage to force the window up — gods he'd _break_ it it necessary —

A loud _crack_ split the air. Molly's hand slipped.

He watched the tower fall away and blur, too quick to feel anything but shock as he hit empty air. And then something else hit him, knocking the wind out of him as he tumbled, stars spinning to earth before coming to a halt clutched in Essek's arms.

Molly wheezed and clung to him, the position awkward — Essek's shoulder dug just between his ribs, but he was more than happy to sling legs around his waist and claw at his mantel for a handful of material. In the haze of his manic vision, he saw branches of light — spectral wings that extended from Essek's shoulder blades, flapping periodically to keep them aloft.

The descent made Molly squeak and cling tighter. Sweat was dripping from his temples, shaking violently as Essek stooped down to force his hooves onto solid earth with a grunt of exertion. Even then, Mollymauk didn't let go of him, just clinging to his arms instead. 

Essek yanked himself away. Molly let him go, wrapping his arms around himself. He forced a grin, saying, "Good — g-good save, Mister Thelyss."

Molly had never seen anger on Essek's face before. It was a quiet thing, simmering beneath a frigid surface. The pin of his ears, the tremor in his hands, the clench of his jaw, those were the things that tipped Molly off to just how badly he'd fucked up here.

"What were you doing?" Essek asked, voice dangerously steady.

Mollymauk even considered telling the truth. Then he remembered how Essek had physically crushed a person's body into an unrecognizable mash, and said, "Well — let me tell you — that was _not_ worth it." It let his brain race ahead as he lifted a finger and played up his breathless state. Not snooping, not spying, just — "I even forgot to actually bring the paints with me."

"The —" Essek's anger faltered. "Paints?"

Molly gave him a grin, rubbing the back of his neck. His legs were trembling too violently to remain upright, and he let himself collapse into the grass instead. Play up the pity angle. He's just a frightened, helpless tiefling, nothing to see here. "I was gonna paint a dick on your window."

 _Blue, blue, blue._ Blue skin, blue hair, but she danced with every other color. A streak of mischief that Mollymauk adored, and he'd snarl in infernal just to delight in her laughter, the best audience he could ask for.

Essek's eyes took on the same hopeless adoration that Mollymauk felt. His shoulders slumped, and he ran his fingers through his hair. Then again. On the third time, his fingers caught, and he tugged at the white strands, for Molly to push himself upright with a "Whoa, hey —" and then to pitch forward as black spots flitted in his vision.

He landed against Essek again, and wheezed a laugh. "I need to sit down. Like, now. Come on."

Molly grabbed Esseks arm and fell back onto the grass, yanking the drow with him to bully him into lying down. It was tempting to just burrow against his side, bask in pressure and warmth. Instead he just let their arms brush where they splayed in the grass.

"These are expensive clothes," Essek said.

"And you can magic the dirt off them, can't you?" Mollymauk looked to the stars. He wasn't sure if they were different here than in the Empire. He thought he remembered somebody pointing shapes out to him, an art not unlike the cards he dealt. You could be born under certain stars, but Molly didn't know them. No matter how many times the lines were traced, he only saw a field of pinprick lights.

"That was stupid, you know," Essek murmured. "Climbing the tower. At least Jester can catch herself if she falls."

Mollymauk scoffed. "Who needs magic? Well, their _own_ magic, anyway. Apparently I've got a wizard at my beck and call."

"Oh, gods," Essek rasped, and Molly cackled. "I should have let you hit the ground."

"It was your fault I lost my grip, anyway," Molly snorted. "Is teleporting always that loud?"

"Yes. Something to do with the displacement of air." Essek raised a hand, curling his fingers through the air. "If you had not been scaling my tower, you would not have fallen."

"Now let's not go pointing fingers." Molly smirked as he grabbed Essek's hand to force it back down to the grass.

The moon smiled down at them, lopsided and thin. A cloud skimmed past it, stealing away the light that bathed them. Mollymauk wasn't particularly devout, but he had to wonder if it wasn't Her blessing.

The Peace Talks arrived almost without Mollymauk's awareness. They were only heralded but the shift in Essek's attitude, from a quiet that was uncharacteristic even for him to snappish remarks, banishing Mollymauk from any space the two of them just happened to end up in together. That was only when he made himself visible at all, still shutting himself away in his towers, shielded from prying eyes.

Mollymauk still wished he'd managed to get in, but whatever was coming, he would have no say in it. And really, that was just fine. Molly really wasn't one to interfere, only to react.

Just waiting had his nerves twisting up, and he found himself slipping things into a bag throughout the day. Swords in their scabbards, the sturdier outfits Essek bought him, gold pieces stolen unabashedly from a cloak left hanging up to be washed later. He hardly realized he was doing it until there was no more room, and he was having to stretch the chord to fit it around the button.

A sigh pushed from his chest. Mollymauk set the bag aside and reached for his supplies. He had a card to make.

The Eclipse was joined with Fractures. Upright, it meant convergence, the joining of multiple parts. Reversed, it was separation, a breaking point. One of the more straightforward symbols, and one that felt right as he began to sketch the pieces.

The sun, and the two moons, overlapping in a line of three. At the edges where they met, they shattered.

_Molly, Molly, what does that one mean, is that you?  
_

_He was smiling before he looked up. Jester was practically sprawled over his back, her hands falling on his shoulders as she peered at the cards he'd laid out.  
_

_"Naw," he grinned. "It's us."  
_

_He was being facetious, but there was a sliver of truth tucked into it. Jester gasped, "Us?_ _Us like you and me or like all of us?" A grin spread across her face as she pressed her cheek to his. "Molly," she giggled, saying his name like Mawl-ee with that curling accent of hers, "do you have a crush on me?"  
_

_Her giggling said it was a joke but he purred, "You know I do, dear." And again, he sort of meant it. Not really, not like how she obviously pined over Mister Fjord, but Mollymauk gave his heart easily, and if almost anyone of this ragtag group wanted to hold his hand or take him to bed, he'd be happy to follow along._

_"Okay okay okay, but you only have one," Jester points out. "What are the rest?"  
_

_"You want a full reading?"  
_

_He was already reaching for his cards as Jester swept a chair to his side and threw herself into it, tail curling with excitement. "Of course," she scoffed, and then perked up. "But first, what's that one?"_

_"The Eclipse," Mollymauk told her. "So if you take this as the past for the Mighty Nein, this is very literally just our meeting. It's the convergence of multiple parts into a singular whole, see? Now, for present..."  
_

_He spread the remainder of his deck on the table. Molly reached for her, saying, "Here, take my hand. Since this is for all of us, the more guiding our hands, the better." And if maybe he nudged them to his own pick, all that mattered was that Jester didn't realize.  
_

_He guided her hand to the middle of the arc, then drew and flipped a card. This one was an image of two coins, one gold and one silver, balanced on opposite ends of a scale. "The Coin," he announced. "Reversed. Also known as_ Risk. _Things are uncertain right now. We may be headed for misfortune — but it's not defined just yet."  
_

_"What kind of misfortune?" Jester asked._

_"Well, they're not_ exact," _Molly chuckled. "But maybe the Future will tell us?"_

_"Oh!" Jester perked up. "Can I pick it?"  
_

_Molly laughed and leaned back, offering her the table. With Eclipse out of the way — and more importantly, Fractures — there wasn't much that could give her a terrible reading —  
_

_Jester pulled a card towards the end of the deck, flipping it with a "Hah!" and all but slamming the card on the table.  
_

_Even though he was the one to make it, Mollymauk felt his gut twist at the sight.  
_

_"The Broken," he announced. The image looked like a web, twisted, jagged spokes of a wheel that ran into one another. "Upright, this card calls for..." Tragedy, specifically. Not always, but often._ _"Harrowing times. Loss. It looks like we've got our work cut out for us, Jes."  
_

_Molly looked at her, feeling his heart skip at the crestfallen expression on her face. He reached for her hand, giving it a squeeze. "So it's good we're together, yeah?" He cajoled, bumping his shoulder into hers until she started giggling.  
_

_"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Molly." She stood up and, sensing the cue, Molly went with her. It was entirely unsurprising when she wrapped her arms around him. Their tails twined together, mutual purrs rumbling in their chests as they swayed back and forth. Then she stepped back, going, "Okay okay okay. Do me, now!"_

_"I already gave you a reading."_

_"Yeah but that was_ age- _s ago!"  
_

_"Alright, alright, but it'll cost you."  
_

The cracking sound of a teleportation spell snapped Molly out of his reverie. He gasped, sitting bolt upright and gouging into his work. His face was wet. The card was ruined.

Cussing, Molly wiped at his eyes. He tossed the card aside, not the least bit satisfied by its tap against the wall as he headed for the door.

Night had long since fallen, keeping the halls dark as he nudged the door open. From below, a sound made his heart skip: a heavy thud, and rasping breath.

Molly froze for just a second, then grabbed one sword before rushing downstairs. The moment he hit them, he could make out Essek's collapsed form, small and shaking. Snippets of his voice were muffled by the curl of his own body, unintelligible muttering between panting breaths.

"Essek," Molly started, "what the hell —"

"Leave me alone, Mollymauk." His voice was a whisper. Essek draw a sharp breath and started to force himself to his feet, the legs quaking so violently they threatened to give out.

"You're a _wreck,"_ he shot back, reaching for Essek's arm. "You —"

Essek _snarled._ Gravity impacted Molly's chest, spots flying in his eyes as he was clawed away from Essek. He collided with a table, the panel of glass screaming against its metal stand, the sound of a crunch as pressure fractured it down the middle. A hot, throbbing pain settled in his back where he'd impacted.

Molly stared at Essek, where the drow stood, a hand still outstretched. His eyes were wide, pupils blown and ears pinned back. A croaking down dragged from his throat.

Molly groaned and staggered to his hooves. His hand dipped to the handle of his scimitar, lips peeling back as he glared at Essek through narrowed eyes.

"Mollymauk," Essek panted, a tinge of shock in his voice. His hand wavered and then fell, he took an aborted step forward. 

Molly prowled towards him. Essek gave no fight as Molly drew his sword and walked him back against the door. Essek's feet were flat on the tile, putting him low enough for Molly to crane his head up into his face.

"Are you _done,"_ he asked, voice dripping with derision. "Or do you have to break something else to feel _better?"_

It was satisfying to watch the shame drip into Essek's face, a horrified light behind his eyes. He didn't speak, only stared, chest heaving.

It was a testament to how rattled Essek had to be that he didn't put up a fight. Molly didn't think he could take him one on one. The man could skip through the air, twist his mind like puddy, turn his body into a puppet on strings if he needed to. But he only shrank against the wall, lips trembling, looking an inch away from crying.

Molly could push him that extra inch.

"Answer the question."

"I'm — sorry —"

Molly cut off his gulping with a, "I didn't _ask_ if you were _sorry._ I asked if you were _done_ with your tantrum." He pressed a hand to Essek's sternum, intentionally trapping him against the wall. "Well?"

Embarrassment flooded Essek's cheeks, staining his ears as he looked away. "Yes," he rasped. "I... I am done. And I am sorry."

"Care to explain what the fuck that was about?"

Essek took another breath, sharp and shallow. A second. A third. Molly could feel his heart pounding under his palm.

"I..." His voice faltered, and he licked his lips. "I. Today. The Nein discovered my betrayal. That... that I stole one of the Beacons of the Dynasty, and handed it over to the Empire to be studied."

Mollymauk studied his face, Essek's pale moon pupils. There was a sheen to them, not yet crying, but close. He could hear each breath, pulling in and hissing out, feel the heaving us his pulse. He eased up on the pressure, letting Essek stagger away from the wall.

"Alright," Molly said, "that certainly _sounds_ like a lot."

Essek glowered. "You don't even know what that _means,"_ he sneered.

Mollymauk bared his teeth in return. _"Enlighten me,_ then."

It didn't take much. He remembered what the Dynasty had done to retrieve their Beacon, the collapse and the panic, the call to war. Essek just drew the line between the dots Molly already had.

As they spoke, more and more of that brief spark of life drained out of Essek. He sagged against the wall, cheek turned away from Mollymauk to speak to the air beside him.

It was bad. It was _really, really_ bad. Worse than anything Mollymauk had forgiven before. Still, he listened, as Essek's voice shook through each word, until they broke into a sharp sound and lapsed into silence. And then it was just Essek, eyes squeezed shut, hands clutching at the wall as he gasped for breath.

Mollymauk drank the image in, and let out a sigh. "Okay," he murmured. "C'mere." He cupped Essek's jaw, drawing him down to press his lips to his forehead. A gasped wrenched from Essek's throat, and Molly hushed him. _"Shhhh,"_ he soothed. _"Shhhh-shhhh-shhhh._ Come on."

Mollymauk took him by the arm, guiding him up the steps. It was slow going with how Essek trembled, and when they reached his bedroom door, Molly had to remind him to open it. Whatever enchantment kept Molly from breaking in parted the way for Essek.

His room was exquisite. Four-poster bed, large enough to comfortably fit two, maybe three. Satin pillows, dramatic curtains framing the window, a shelf of organized components, the rest heavy with books. A bathroom was attached, and gods did Molly want to spy on what was in _there.  
_

That was a good idea, actually.

"Have you eaten anything?" Molly asked, unsurprised when Essek shook his head. He didn't say anything else for the next few minutes. Instead, it was spent figuring out how to undo his mantel. First the material, falling away heavier than expected. The metal that guarded his neck came apart in two pieces. Then earrings, Essek's ears twitching away from his touch. Essek stood still, letting him do as he pleased.

"Can you get the rest?" Molly asked, tugging his shirt for emphasis.

Essek took a solid moment to process it, and gave a single nod. He reached slowly for the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head.

"Great," Molly smiled. He cupped Essek's face, making sure their gazes met. "You take a shower. Just rinse off, you don't have to do anything else. I'll be back up with dinner for you. Alright?"

"... Alright."

"Wonderful." Molly gave his cheek a solid pat and pushed him towards the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He didn't wait to head down the stairs, but listened for the spray of water as he scrapped a meal together. 

He made two trips, one for a pitcher of water and glasses, the other for two bowls of soup. By that point, Essek had emerged from the shower, dressed in a long robe and seated on the bed, staring at the floor. He was mostly dry, but his hair was messier, so Mollymauk had to assume he'd magicked the water off. That was a good sign.

Molly set one bowl down on a dresser to click his fingers. "Hey," he said, voice sharp in a way that wasn't meant to snap, just to catch his attention. Essek glanced up, and Molly handed the bowl over. "That's yours. Eat as much as you can."

It was good soup. Simple, but good. That was most of what Molly knew how to make.

The first few bites were a visible effort, but they seemed to awaken Essek's hunger, as he hurried through the bowl, only breaking to take sips of water. When their bowls were empty, Molly set them aside and banished Essek to the sink to brush his teeth, vanishing to do his own.

He ended up having to pull Essek away from the mirror with a huff of, "Come on, no getting existential before bed." 

When he pulled the covers back, Essek only stared at him. A raised eyebrow got an explanation: "I do not need to sleep."

Mollymauk squinted at him. "Right." He drew the word out. "You _meditate._ Well. Can you meditate laying down? Like, you _have_ a bed. If you're not using it, then you _will_ give it to me. Capiche?"

Essek stared through him for another few moments before absently nodding, and climbing into the bed, letting Molly pull the covers up around him.

"There we go," Molly smiled. "Snug as a bug in a rug."

"A bug in a rug would likely be hopelessly lost," Essek murmured. His eyelids were already drooping.

"Oh hush," Molly snorted. He hesitated for only a moment before saying, "Now, I'm gonna ask you a question here. No judgement, alright?"

Essek heaved a sigh. "That is always a good start."

"I said hush, no more sass." Molly flapped a hand. "Do you want me to stay here tonight?"

 _That_ got his attention. He looked more alert than he'd been since leaving this morning, just gazing at Mollymauk without saying a word.

Molly gave a faint smile. "Let's make this easier. Do you want me to leave?"

A moment's pause, and then Essek shook his head.

"Great. Will you flip out if I get in the bed next to you?"

Another shake, this one with an eye-roll to boot.

"Excellent," Molly purred, and wasted no time in sliding into the bed. He immediately seized a pillow to bunch under his head, stretching out with pleased sound. "Oh, fuck, this is _wasted_ on you. _Wasted."_ What was the nicest bed Molly had ever slept on? It didn't _matter,_ this _won.  
_

Essek gave a quiet, breathy sort of laugh. "Your turn to hush," he murmured. "I... _am_ exhausted." And it showed.

Molly made a show of theatrical offense, before settling back down and tucking just one lock of loose white hair back into place. "Alright, then. Goodnight, Mister Thelyss."

The sounds of their breaths became the ambience of the room, amid the cool breeze outside, nighttime dwellers singing their songs. Amid it all, Molly very nearly missed Essek's whisper, muffled and half-slurred as it was: "Goodnight, Mister Tealeaf."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the tarot cards are actually of my own making! I devised a deck of 20 for my dnd party, and early on they each rolled for a reading. Some of them were scary-accurate. So the Eclipse, the Broken One, and the Coin are all cards from the "Seven Wonders" world's deck!
> 
> So we finally hit the turning point!! Please let me know what you think, hearing from you all is what makes me so eager to write for you. <3


	10. Chapter 10

Elves typically did not sleep, after childhood. It was seen as childish, and regardless left him feeling groggy as he came to consciousness. Slipping from meditation was a sharpening of the senses, everything he already knew was there just becoming finer in detail. This was a sudden but not jarring awareness — one moment there was peaceful, comfortable dark, and the next he was awake in bed, vision blurred as he yawned and stretched.

A shift at his back made one ear flick. He wasn’t alarmed by the reminder of Mollymauk’s presence, though it did bring with it the gut-wrenching memory of the previous night’s affairs. The memory had already blurred, but its weight had made a home under his skin. He was overly aware of a patch of skin, the center of his forehead, where two pairs of lips had pressed. 

Essek pushed himself up, pausing as he noticed Mollymauk’s tail twined around his calf. The spade of his tail wasn’t as sharp as it looked, pressing a harmlessly blunted edge against his skin beneath the covers, and he slipped himself free of its grasp as he slid out of bed.

Mollymauk only burrowed deeper into his pillow. The tiefling was on his belly, head twisted to the side on the pillow. He clutched it with one arm, his hair had lightly tangled, and there was a wet spot of drool on the pillowcase that made Essek snort. 

The reaction caught him off guard. It was only an echo of amusement, but an echo was more than nothing. Every moment with the Nein had been his heart pounding, voice remarkably steady when he was an inch away from tears. And then it was over. Nott’s —  _ Veth’s  _ little welcome ringing in his ears as he motioned through his spell. He’d been achingly numb as he staggered through his front door last night.

Essek had nearly collapsed when he landed in his front yard, and only managed to stay on his feet long enough to get through the front door. Then he was on the floor, a solid pressure on his brain that threatened to crack under its own weight. 

Passing the stairs, he remembered that crack with a wince. Through the banister he saw that the table was still knocked askew. Mollymauk would have to be bruised from that loss of composure. Shame made his face feel hot, and he scrubbed at his forehead as he plodded off to find a piece of glossy paper. The page folded itself into a bird when he was done scrawling out instructions, fluttering through a window to find the apothecary and have a new set of potions sent to his home. He’d brew his own later.

As Essek returned to the hallway, he braced his arms on the rail, staring down at the front door. He had days to pass before the ships would even meet for the peace talks. Days before he’d see the Nein again, days in which they would have time to consider exactly what Essek had done. 

It was a cold realization, that they said last night could have been an elaborate deception. They’d known about him, before they arrived. They had  _ time _ to plot against him. They had even more stretching out ahead. 

Staring at the drop to the first floor, a wave of vertigo curled up from his stomach. Essek choked on his breath and pushed himself away from the banister, feeling weak in the knees. He wasn’t needed anywhere today. It was only early morning. He could afford to lie down a little longer. 

Molly had shifted since Essek left the bed, and his eyes glinted in the cloaked dark of the room. Essek hesitated, but Molly just uncurled from his cocoon of blankets, peeling the corner back in invitation. 

“Sleeping in?” Essek murmured, as he gave in and slid back into place. He was abruptly aware he was just dressed in a robe and underwear, and that the tie had come loose in the night. It was too late to correct it now. 

Mollymauk gave him a withering look, or the best he could with his face still heavy with sleep. “No,” he mumbled. “Yer jus’ weird. Mos’ folks can’t get by on four hours.”

“Oh,” Essek winced. “Right.” 

_ “Shhhhh.”  _ Mollymauk barely lifted his hand, as though to cover Essek’s mouth before it fell heavily to the mattress. Essek breathed a sigh, and was just closing his eyes before Molly grumbled and said, “‘S fuckin’ cold, now. C’mere.” 

Molly rolled over and scooted himself backwards, against Essek. He was low enough on the mattress that his tail curled between Essek’s thighs and over one calf, leaving him hyperaware of the line it traced on his bare skin. His back was pressed to Essek’s chest, shifting the robe aside. The plane where their skin met was hot, the sensation overwhelming but impossible to reject. Molly  _ purred,  _ and he felt the vibration against his skin. 

Essek held his breath. It lasted several long seconds before Molly stiffened up again, craning his head just enough to be heard clearly as he said, “You fucking disaster, you can’t even  _ snuggle.”  _

And then Mollymauk had seized his arm, pulling it over his own belly so that Essek was properly aligned against his body. With the exception of his other arm being squished under his own weight, the position felt right. It was just how people were designed to lay, back-to-chest, one’s chin atop the other’s head, limbs tangled together, the warmth between them more than enough to keep Xhorhas’ bitterest chill at bay. 

His heart pounded, so fast and so hard he was certain Molly must be able to feel it. The tiefling gave no indication of this, just bunching his pillow up under his head, horns safely capped so their points wouldn’t tear it open. 

So Essek had no choice but to force the tension from his body, one muscle at a time. Sleep wouldn’t come to him for a long while as he focused on every point of contact, obsessed over the rate of his breathing and whether shifting his arm to a more comfortable position would disturb his bedmate. But as the sun slid through the sky behind the dark clouds and the curtains at his window, the warmth and the swell of Molly’s breathing coaxed him back to sleep. 

They would wake again hours later, in the late morning. They’d changed positions, with Molly at Essek’s back when he came to, his hold on Essek tightening to pull them flush together as he crooned a waking sound. When the tiefling clambered from the bed, it was to claim Essek’s shower, crowing through the shut door that Essek was a selfish bastard for hogging it to himself. He barely had the mind to be amused or offended, remembering the sparks that skittered down his back when Molly’s lips skimmed the nape of his neck when he pulled Essek closer. 

They headed downstairs for breakfast, and Essek excused himself to his tower for work. He’d been assigned to enhance the Lucid Bastion’s security since the incident with the Volstrucker, and Essek’s current project was developing something to dampen prisoner’s thoughts, keep them conscious but muddled with a form of magical sedation. 

It was a bard’s notes he worked through, the theory of a calm emotions spell lending itself to this work. That was how he passed his days waiting for the Peace Talks, scratching out notes and wishing he could get Caleb to read them over. Essek didn’t work well with partners, they were always too slow or too broad or got hung up on unimportant details, but  _ Caleb  _ matched his wavelength, and Veth matched Caleb’s, and Essek had never felt a sense of belonging quite so strong as the moment he realized they’d  _ done  _ it. 

And he’d gone and ruined it. It was poisoned before they even met. 

If he did have to run, he would lose Mollymauk too, he was certain, for the tiefling would be the perfect bargaining chip to keep the Nein’s wrath at bay. No blustering threats about favors, just the life of someone they’d already lost at stake. 

Essek could not say he felt particularly guilty for his actions. On a broad scale, there was discomfort knowing he’d played a good hand in launching this war, but he was only one string in an entire web. It was thoughts of running, however, of turning on them, one more betrayal to add to the list, that left him slumped over his desk. He abruptly crumpled a page from his notes in a hand, and then tore it out. The page before it was ripped free as well, and then the one before that, until he’d shredded the entire day’s work and discarded it across the floor and still only felt a buzzing numbness in his chest. 

That was enough work for the day. 

Mollymauk attempted to speak when he passed him on the way to his bedroom, but Essek just brushed past him and locked the door with a spell. If he caught the shadow of Molly’s tail lashing, he didn’t bother to acknowledge it. 

  
  
  


A sending from Jester, asking for diamonds, was his only word from the Nein before he saw them again. Part of him regretted not just giving in, the price of a diamond  _ trivial  _ compared to his life, to proving he had no desire to betray them. 

The day of the Peace Talks, his lips trembled as he breathed through three incantations: his disguise, an invisibility spell, and finally the teleportation spell. He plummeted, then landed with his feet on creaking wood. The sudden shift of the ground made Essek stagger, before gravity coalesced under his boots to catch his step.

This version of invisibility ran on a short clock, and the crack of his arrival was muffled amid the groaning of the ship. He found the stairs, dropping the spell the moment he was out of any line of sight to climb the steps as Lord Dezran Thain. 

The Nein were there, and he worked his throat in a swallow as they caught sight of him. Beau’s hostility was something he can barely keep from tensing against, his eyes already searching her face for malice. She had always been abrasive, but at what point did that become a plot, how did he tell when she  _ meant  _ it. 

Jester’s “It’s good to see you,” made his heart skip. Shame washed over him as he looked at her.

“You as well,” he returned, and his lips quirked upwards at her smile. They didn’t respond as he explained himself, tacked on a ‘ _ if you don’t mind’  _ with a sense of apprehension. They did not reject him, but gave him no assent to his request to stay aboard their ship.

They were keeping him at length. He remembered the faith they’d put into him, trusting he’d get them to see their prisoner, that he’d land them safely where they needed to be, inviting him to dinner in their home, and he swallowed around a thick lump in his throat. Now that they knew him, now that he was ready to aid them, wholeheartedly, they lowered their voices to ensure he couldn’t hear. 

Not that he was certain he wanted to know why they’d placed a  _ Fjord dummy  _ in the Captain’s quarters. 

The day passed. He returned to home, some part of him wanting to get the pastries Jester had requested, the rest far too exhausted to take another step. He did not bother to check if Mollymauk had set any leftovers aside for him as he fell into bed alone, but upon waking was disappointed to found he  _ hadn’t.  _ Nor had he tried to engage Essek in much of anything since that night they spent together. 

He was too numb to feel guilty about it. 

It was seeing Taskhand Adeen that broke the shroud over his mind. It was weight lifted off his chest, watching someone else take his fall. He knew Beau would not like his answer, but he could not lie when he admitted it was freeing. 

He could feel the tension as he left. Caleb’s parting words scratched at his skull, the  _ happy days  _ that he echoed _.  _ A genuine wish, or mockery? What did Caleb think of him, he wondered. He’d never gone deep into his past, but it was impossible not to  _ know.  _

There came a Zemnian man who claimed no love for the Empire, who knew the Volstruckers, was nearly of their number, who had lines upon lines upon lines of scars up his arms, pockmarks of missing flesh, messily healed. And Essek had aligned himself with the people he must despise. 

At what point was Caleb going to look in the mirror and realize they were  _ not _ reflections of one another. That Caleb, at his core, still had good intentions. Perhaps he’d already realized, and was just lining the tinder around Essek’s feet and waiting to set the blaze. 

He got in bed and laid there for hours. And then the first  _ bang  _ sounded outside. 

It made his heart slam in his chest. He scrambled up in time to hear another sequence, a  _ bang-bang  _ and the sound of showering sparks. Beyond his door, he heard Mollymauk emerge from his own bedroom, then the trotting of hooves through the hall and down the stairs. 

Essek bunched a pillow over his head, wishing he’d thought to prepare a silencing spell for the day. Outside, the pops and rattles continued, Essek cringing with each sharp burst of noise. The sound of rapid knocking at his door was nearly enough to make him snarl. 

_ “What?”  _ He bit out. 

“Fireworks!” Mollymauk’s voice was muffled, but the excitement was still audible. “Come on!”

“You go ahead,” Essek muttered, shutting his eyes. Despite his words, Mollymauk did not leave, and incessant knocking and a rattling doorknob joined the cacophony of the celebration outside. News of the war’s official end must have been announced at last, and the tension that weighed upon the city had burst in a flurry of colors. 

“Essek, come  _ on,” _ Molly crowed. “I swear to every fucking god — Beacons included — if you don’t come out and see the fireworks I’m going to set some off in your bed. And that’s not even a fun euphemism!”

And the worst part was, Essek knew he meant it. Much as he wanted to grind his heels in and refuse, he physically couldn’t deal with any more annoyances. If going out to see the fireworks for one second before locking Mollymauk out of the house would earn him a bit more quiet,  _ so be it.  _

He wrenched the door open, Molly looking taken aback for just a second before his face brightened. “Atta boy,” he grinned, and seized Essek’s hand to pull him down the stairs. He flung the front door open, where the two of them got a full view of a whistling, spiraling point of light that arced beneath the clouds before it burst. The colors shimmered from gold to bright red, and Mollymauk whooped as the sky burst with a dozen more. 

Essek watched him, not the fireworks, blue and green reflecting off of Mollymauk’s face as though to manifest his joy. He squeezed Essek’s hand and bounced when a particularly bold series shot above the city, the distant sound of its people cheering along with him. 

The dull, cold thing that smothered Essek warmed just enough. “Come on,” he sighed, and then cast dimension door. It was pulling Mollymauk just a step to the left, and then they were walking on the tower’s bridge. Molly yelped, staggering into Essek’s side. 

“I said to fucking warn me!” He spat, but there was no anger in his face, and Essek smirked down at him. 

“It’s a better view up here,” he said, voice dry, the next whistling rocket punctuating the point. 

“You’ll get yours,” Molly swore, but abandoned the game to plop down cross-legged on the bridge and beam up at the sky. 

Essek did not sit down. They wouldn’t linger for the entire show, or even all that long at all. It was still long enough for Essek to hover at his side and watch the unadulterated awe in his face, and to feel his chest grow tighter and tighter until he worried he would choke on his own heart. He wanted something at that moment, nameless and without form. Maybe it was just that joy he craved, like he could somehow taste it on Mollymauk’s skin if he pressed his lips in just the right places. 

“So it went alright?” Molly asked, having to raise his voice to be heard above another flash. 

It took a moment to understand the question. “At least in the public eye,” Essek told him. “It is not that simple, but... “ 

“Don’t bother with the details.” Molly lifted a hand, and Essek took it automatically, steadying him as he stood. “What I’m hearing is something good happened, and it’s  _ damn  _ well worth celebrating.” 

Essek drew a breath, fighting the urge to grimace at such ignorance. He just sighed and said, “I wish I had that… blind optimism.” 

“Oh,  _ shut up.” _ Molly rolled his eyes. “I get you think you’re being…  _ deep,  _ or  _ profound  _ right now _.  _ Just let yourself have  _ one  _ good thing, for  _ one  _ night, Essek. The world’s not gonna end because you stopped thinking about what a wreck it is.” 

Essek frowned, affronted. “I’m not —” 

“ — saying  _ anything  _ worth hearing right now.” Molly overrode him, tail curling with an energy that had Essek immediately wary. “Say, Mister Thelyss. You know how to dance?” 

And there it was. “No.” Short, final.

“No problem, I can teach you  _ something —”  _

_ “No,”  _ Essek repeated, with emphasis. “I know  _ several  _ dances, but I am  _ not  _ dancing.” 

“Wow,” Mollymauk simpered, shaking his head. “Really, it’s fine if you’re not  _ good.  _ Everyone out there’s gonna be too drunk to care —” 

“There is no problem with my ability to dance.” Essek’s face grew warm, the absurdity of the argument only getting him more riled up. He served as the Shadowhand, he knew how to carry himself in front of a crowd, whether it be speaking or dancing or just standing with confidence. 

“Seriously, we’re all bad at something,” Molly continued with fake sympathy. “I’m bad at reading, Nott’s bad at lying,  _ Shadowhand Essek Thelyss  _ is bad at —” 

_ “Fine,”  _ he snapped, and instantly regretted it. Mollymauk’s sneering grin lit up as he seized Essek and pulled him towards a tower, back towards the house. 

_ “Excellent.  _ Get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs, yeah?” 

And then Essek was left behind, knowing that if he wanted to he could just disappear and never have to deal with anything Mollymauk tried to push him into. Instead he trudged up the stairs, opened the closet, and dug for something worth wearing. 

When he saw Mollymauk, his breath caught. It was audacious, a black suit jacket nearly consumed by burgundy lace, whorling designs of leaves and petals weaving into one another. The shirt underneath was sleek and black, but opalescent buttons and a gem-encrusted brooch destroyed the illusion of simplicity. 

Essek could blend in with a shadow by comparison, all black and purple, a nip of gold where he felt most confident, a chain hanging off his ear and across his lapels. And despite the simplicity of the design, Mollymauk drank him in like he was starving. 

“You know, I thought that as formally as you dress, it wouldn’t feel like a change,” Molly commented. It stung for just a moment before he clicked his tongue and added, “But you love proving people wrong, don’t you?  _ Mister Thelyss?”  _

He teased the name between his teeth. Essek felt pride curl up his spine, warm and sharp. He lifted his chin, peering down at Molly through his lower lashes, a faint smile lifting his mouth. “It’s not too novel, you make it a  _ trivial  _ affair.”

Molly’s smile grew vicious. “So, where to?” 

They set off. Essek put on an illusion as they walked, but announcing it to Mollymauk meant it faded to the tiefling’s eyes, so Mollymauk saw the Shadowhand and the rest of the world saw a nameless drow. It was a comfort, to go completely unnoticed even as they passed into busier and busier streets. Children ran past with firecrackers in hand, vendors had scrambled to roll out street food and booze. A cab wouldn’t get them far with the crowded streets, and so they walked, arms linked together to ensure they couldn’t get jostled apart. 

The Twilight Mask was a higher class establishment, meaning that while it saw plenty of business, it wasn’t crammed to capacity like some of the other locations they passed. 

They entered to the tune of warbling strings. Mollymauk tipped his head to listen, then made a face. “I can’t dance to this shit,” he complained. It was a slower song, something with a romantic drawl to it. “C’mon, let’s sit down until they figure out how to liven this place up.” 

Essek let himself be towed into a booth, and then let Mollymauk order them both drinks with just a word that he had no interest in strong liquor. 

“Honesty hour,” Mollymauk sang, when the waiter had left. He leaned over the table, peering at Essek from the corner of his eye. “I know, horribly out of character. But really,  _ can  _ you dance?” 

“I know several dances,” Essek repeated. 

“And where might one dance these dances?”

The quiet stretched out as Essek left him unanswered. It was an obvious issue: the dances  _ he  _ knew were meant for balls in the Bright Queen’s court, not anything befitting of a revelry. 

“That’s alright,” Molly chuckled. “I don’t know how to dance either.” 

Essek’s head snapped to him, and Molly gave a cackle. “Trust me, it’ll come to you! Well.  _ Maybe.  _ It’s just about knowing what to listen for but, now that I’m thinking about it, your balance must be absolute shit, floating everywhere.” 

He continued, but Essek tuned out, putting his head in his hands. At one point the waiter arrived, and for once Essek had no qualms about getting inebriated. He couldn’t teleport them home anyway. 

Penance arrived with an uptick in the atmosphere. He hadn’t drunk much — but then he hadn’t eaten much, either, nor was he known for his tolerance — but didn’t notice it until Mollymauk was shaking him to attention, tail practically slapping the back of his seat. 

“Come on,  _ this  _ is something worth moving to,” Molly beamed, and dragged Essek to his feet. 

They were absorbed into the crowd. Violins sang out, a bouncing pace that Molly dragged him into. His eyes flickered to the others, trying to memorize their movements. They, too, were bouncing, feet tapping and legs lifting, springing up off the ground with their partner in arm. It didn’t make sense. 

Hands clapped on either side of his face, and Essek startled as Molly pulled him down. “Just follow me,” he said, punctuating each word before dropping down to grab Essek’s hands. 

“There’s a beat,” Molly explained, as he coaxed him into a shifting pace, left and right and left and right. “Count it, see?  _ One _ -two-three,  _ one _ -two-three —” 

He sang the beats, quick but flowing, their steps moving slower than the beat would suggest. It was on every other  _ one  _ that he had Essek shift his foot, forward and back. “Ready now?” Molly asked, eyes bright. “Little quicker, kick your feet.” 

It became more sensible as he followed the step. The measure was just numbers to be counted, a simple pattern as he kicked left then right and then Mollymauk looped his arm through Essek’s and skipped in a ring. 

He found himself smiling as Molly let go of him, but didn’t stray far, leaving Essek to his simple rhythm as he sprang around him with his arms hoisted above his head. It didn’t match the rest of the room but it fit the number, and Essek wasn’t paying the other dancers much mind when Molly was reaching for him as they rotated around each other again. 

The song didn’t last long before it leapt into something raucous, Molly jumping with delight as he seized Essek’s hands and said, “ _ This  _ is mine. Just hold onto me — fuckin’ float if you gotta.” 

He had to, at points, as quickly as they moved. Molly’s hooves stamped with a satisfying clack, and he was more than happy to swing Essek around, ducking under his arm and letting go to spin himself before melting back into place with his back to Essek’s chest, step left step right then turn so they’re face to face again, and when Essek stumbled he helped pull him into place and fell right back into the music. 

More songs, more drinks, it started to fuzz together. Embarrassment slipped away, and suddenly he didn’t care that he didn’t have a single gods-damned clue what he was doing. If Mollymauk wanted to spin, then Essek would happily take the cue too late. A smile spread across his face, and it took a word from Mollymauk to remember to restore his disguise when its duration was spent, a word that had such appreciation flaring in his chest he wanted to kiss him for it. 

Then the next song started up, and they were moving again, Essek’s heart pounding with excitement and exertion alike. He panted, his browline damp with sweat, and Molly was in a similar state with cheeks flushed violet and lips parted around each breath. They distanced less and less, every moment where they weren’t holding onto each other spent with fingers trailing down the back or a hand reaching, waiting to be caught so they could draw each other together again. They were two points of gravity, each orbit bringing them closer. 

The song ended with a crescendo. From where they’d been flung out, each body one half of a pair of wings, they pulled themselves close again, free hands clasping and torsos pressing on that final triumphant note. Their chests heaved against one another as they sucked in deep breaths, Essek suddenly aware of the weakness in his knees, how Mollymauk leaned into him for support. 

He was more aware of the flush on Molly’s face, shiny with sweat and red eyes fixed on Essek’s own panting mouth. 

“Hey,” Mollymauk breathed, one hand freeing itself from Essek’s grasp so he could drape his arm over his shoulder, fingers pushing through his hair. “Hey, Essek, can I kiss you?” 

Essek didn’t know if he nodded, or said yes, or leaned down to do it himself, but he learned that Molly’s lips were full and chapped. He drew back, just far enough to meet Molly’s eyes, before the hand in his hair coaxed him down again. 

He hadn’t kissed many people. It felt clumsy, Essek uncertain how to move his lips. Mollymauk didn’t seem to mind, purring as he tipped his head to slot their lips together, a slow draw of his mouth over Essek’s. 

It was another dancer who broke them apart, bumping into their bodies and snapping a curse in undercommon. Molly snapped back, infernal hissing off his tongue, and the look on the drow’s face as he tripped into another couple had Essek sputtering on a laugh. 

The music had changed, playing a heavy thrum now. Mollymauk leaned up to steal one last kiss, Essek too surprised to reciprocate, and then purred, “I’m beat. Ready to go?” 

They were still holding hands. Essek squeezed Molly’s fingers. “Yeah. Let’s head home.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _At last._
> 
> I've been very excited for this chapter. I got it in my head pretty early that they'd have their first kiss during the celebration after the Peace Talks. And now... well. I suppose you'll see. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think. Also, thank you so much for the response last chapter! I was delighted to hear from you all, and it really had me excited to get this chapter out for you <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, this chapter is nsfw. It is pretty much all sex, so if you’re not here for that, you’re probably going to want to wait for next chapter. There’s a little bit of relationship chatter at the very end if you want to read that, starting at "It wasn’t a terrible outcome." Otherwise I’ll summarize it in the end notes.
> 
> Next, I sat down and had another brainstorming session and I think I’ve figured out how I want to take A Bird in the Hand from here on out! ABITH is _most likely_ going to be canon through the Rumblecusp arc, and then diverge. As such I recommend you be caught up to episode 108 as we go forward. At a certain point, I am going to mark ABITH as complete, and then move on to a sequel! While A Bird in the Hand is pretty much solely going to deal with Essek and Mollymauk’s relationship, the sequel should bring the rest of the Nein in, and with that we move on to the Widoshadowmauk that this series was always meant to be. 
> 
> I’m speaking in “probably”s because it’s entirely possible I’ll change my mind, but! This is the plan so far. I hope you’ll stick with me through it <3 
> 
> Additionally, quick warning: Molly and Essek were drinking before this, and while neither of them are slurring and both are consenting, it’s still a detail worth being aware of in case that bugs you!

Essek was a paranoid man, and that was something he never truly regretted. Being paranoid meant that he brought all his casting components to a dance club, and let him drag shimmering chalk along the alley wall as his buzzing lips formed an incantation. Runes were knitted into a circle that sparked and burst into a dark purple glow as he connected the final line. 

Hand in hand with Mollymauk, they both reached for it. Magic yanked them forward, sprawling them head over and landing them in the makeshift foyer of Essek’s tower. 

They took a moment to recover, and then Mollymauk slid his arms around Essek’s shoulders and kissed him. He was patient with Essek’s fumbling, laughing softly against his lips when their mouths didn’t align quite right, murmuring something unintelligible as he corrected the angle. Essek didn’t know where to put his hands, ending up just fisting them in Mollymauk’s jacket.

They staggered across the room, Essek’s back pressing up to a wall, Molly only parting long enough to make sure their teeth didn’t clack together at the halt in momentum.

Sharp fangs pressed into his lower lip. Essek gasped, and Molly laughed. He looked up at Essek, eyelids hooded, a smile playing across his lips. “Okay?” He checked. His hand slid up to toy through the stubble at the base of Essek’s skull. 

It was almost too much, the heat trapped between their bodies and how Molly’s fingers made his skin buzz. Words wouldn’t come. Essek kept his eyes shut and huffed through his nose, ears twitching with each pleasant drag of Molly’s nails.

“Essek,” Molly crooned. “Need an answer. You okay?” 

It took a moment, but he rasped out, “Yes.” 

“Wanna keep going?” 

A pause.  _ “Yes.”  _

_ “Good.”  _ His voice was a purr, and the arm still around his shoulders tugged him down so Molly could kiss him again. This time when Essek felt his teeth, he only groaned, and Molly didn’t pull away. His tongue lapped over the spot, encouraging Essek to part his lips as shivers wracked down his spine. All he could do was hold on and try to match him. His arms tightened, pulling Molly thoughtlessly closer. 

Mollymauk broke the kiss, but didn’t go far. He only breathed up into Essek’s ear, “Can you get us somewhere to sit down?” 

Essek swallowed, then said, “Yes. Hold onto me.” He waited for Molly’s arm to tighten before casting dimension door. They stepped backwards, through a stretch of dark, and Essek’s knees hit the back of his bed.    
  
He plopped down on his ass, Molly braced over him with bright eyes. “Now  _ that’s  _ a good rush,” he grinned, and started nudging him further back on the bed and getting the jacket off Essek’s shoulders at the same time. “Are magic kinks a thing?” 

Essek scooted to sit in the middle of his bed. “Probably,” he said, trying to go for dry and unimpressed and ending up hushed. He cleared his throat, “Depravity doesn’t have many boundaries, in my experience.”

Molly smirked. “No,” he purred, “it does not.”

The haughty self-righteousness died on Essek’s tongue as Mollymauk climbed into his lap. It put him taller than Essek, and the sensation of being small and held in place sent equal thrill and apprehension into his belly. The latter was smothered as Molly cupped his face and kissed him  _ hard.  _

Essek’s hand found Molly’s hair, earning a soft trill before the kiss turned  _ hungry.  _ Heat dripped down to his belly, bringing with it the first scratches of embarrassment. Was it normal to get this worked up over kissing, over a tiefling in his lap.

A particularly sharp nip left his lower lip stinging, and as he was still gasping in a breath Molly started kissing his jaw, and then lower. His mouth closed over a patch of skin on his neck, scorching, and the noise Essek made had his face flushing with shame. He didn’t know he could even  _ sound _ like that. He was the Shadowhand, not some child fooling around between lessons. But control was slipping between his fingers, the hand that wasn’t in Molly’s hair now scratching down the back of his jacket, Essek shaking as Molly sucked at his skin. 

The sound of his own groans had his head swimming with humiliation. Worse was the breathy, high-pitched noise that rang on every panting exhale. Abruptly, he pushed at Molly, a stumbling, “Stop —  _ stop —”  _ falling from his mouth.

Molly pulled back at once, eyes wide. He didn’t completely abandon his place, but lifted his weight so he was no longer fully seated on top of Essek. “I’m stopping,” he assured him, hands lifted as though in surrender. “What’s wrong?” 

Essek looked away, unable to meet his eyes. His face was painfully hot, the brief moment of panic sliding right into regret. “Sorry,” he bit out. 

“Never apologize for that.” Molly’s voice wasn’t  _ sharp,  _ but definite. It left no room for argument. Softer, he said, “But, it’s helpful if you can give me a bit more detail, yeah? Do you want to  _ completely  _ stop, or is there something we should avoid?” 

Against his better judgement, Essek looked at him again. He seemed sincere, head tipped faintly to the side in an attentive, curious manner.

“It’s just…” He breathed, taking a moment to find the words. “I hate how I sound.” 

Molly’s brow furrowed. “That’s it?”

Essek’s ears pinned back, and Molly rushed to correct, “I mean — sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.  _ I  _ thought you sounded hot as hell, so it just caught me off guard.” 

Doubt prickled at him, and Essek found himself searching Molly’s face for some twitch of deception. “You actually find  _ that  _ attractive?” 

_ “Oh yes.”  _ He practically breathed the words, the red of his eyes feeling like they could consume Essek. There wasn’t a lie, not as far as Essek could tell. No embellishment. And Mollymauk continued, voice lowering to a husk, “We can stop, if you want. Or you can have a go at me. But if it’s okay with you, I’d  _ really  _ enjoy hearing more of you.” 

Essek was nodding before he could convince himself otherwise. Molly smiled, pressing a soft kiss to his lips and adding, “And hey, feel  _ free  _ to yank on my hair. Not to pull me back, though, I just like it.” He winked, and whatever retort Essek had was strangled as Molly descended upon him again. 

Essek lost the will to stay upright as he fell back on his elbows, head rolling to bear his throat. There was a sound like a growl from Mollymauk before his teeth sunk into his skin. Essek couldn’t muffle his cry, partially in pain but more the rush of adrenaline and lust. It felt borderline  _ predatory  _ and Essek couldn’t figure out why he seemed to like that, some part of him wanting Molly to hold him down and — 

His nails scratched down the back of Molly’s jacket, finding where the material parted around his tail. His fingers curled automatically around it, needing to hold onto something. Molly gasped, then purred, the sound a low rumble in his chest. “Don’t pull,” he warned, “But holding’s  _ just fine.” _ His breath grazed Essek’s ear before his teeth. He whimpered, aware of how his face was pinched, wondering just how desperate he looked, the ear that wasn’t held between Molly’s fangs quivering with warmth.

Molly kissed his cheek, then his jaw, then down his throat and to the neck of his shirt. It was a sheer thing, not even meant to be seen under the coat Essek had worn. Molly’s fingers played at his hips, skimming the hem of his shirt. “Want this off?” Molly asked, voice low. 

Essek’s head was swimming. He pushed himself up, and Molly slid the material up and over his head. Something about the drag of his sleeves before they came free felt chokingly intimate, and Essek had to stare at the wall instead of at Molly as he laid back again. 

Mollymauk didn’t go down with him. He stayed perched on top of him instead, his hands smoothed down Essek’s chest. Essek’s gaze flickered back to him. 

He was pinned under Molly’s stare. His gaze bored into Essek, eyes raking up his chest and to his face, his bitten lips and twitching ears. His tongue slid out, Essek watching the fork of it as it drew along Mollymauk’s lower lip. 

Then he watched Molly pop the single button of his jacket, tossing it aside before undoing those of the shirt underneath. As more and more skin was revealed, Essek felt the rising desire to put his hands on him. He was all lean muscle, illustrated with scars and tattoos alike. 

Molly was kissing him before he could find the words to ask, and then Essek had all the access he could dream of. He grabbed at Molly’s hair, enjoying the hiss against his lips and how Molly just pressed harder, a force to the kiss that Essek would almost call  _ punishing _ if it didn’t feel so good. His weight pressed Essek into the bed, trapping heat between their chests to burn. As Molly returned to his neck, he was fervently thankful his mantle would cover the bruises being dragged across his throat. 

Each moment made him more and more aware of the heat that pulsed between his legs. The pressure there was becoming uncomfortable, he ached to just cant his hips up and drag himself against Molly’s thigh. Self-consciousness pinned him in place — was that  _ childish,  _ somehow, would it betray that he hadn’t done this in decades and had no idea what to do now. 

“Hey.” Molly’s voice got him to refocus, finding the tiefling hovering over him and frowning. “You’re thinking too hard.” 

“You can tell?” He said it like a joke, but winced. Getting distracted in bed was certainly a faux pas. 

“You stopped squirming.” Molly sounded disappointed. Then he said, lower, voice saccharine, “You need to  _ stop  _ thinking sometimes. You know what I do when my head gets too noisy?”

Essek knew the answer, but he still asked, “What?”

“This.” Molly slid his hand down, fingers dipping just under Essek’s waistband, making his breath catch but going no further. “Nothing makes you sleep better than a good fuck before bed, you know? Though we don’t  _ have  _ to do that. I’m happy to go down on you. Or to just call it a night here. What’s your preference, Mister Thelyss?” 

Essek’s voice stuck. Molly gave him a grin, then shifted off of Essek to sit on his knees, motioning for him to do the same. When they were both sitting upright, Molly said, “I’m not gonna save you this time. I really need your words, here. What do you want from me?” 

Essek needed a long moment to think about it. Molly was patient, just carding fingers through Essek’s hair, the motion grounding. His eyelids drooped as he leaned into it, trying to tip his head where Molly’s touch would feel best. 

“I don’t want to stop,” he said. It was easier to figure out the negatives first. 

Mollymauk gave an encouraging hum, and Essek cleared his throat to continue. “I… I, ah, don’t want  _ you  _ to… fuck me.” He winced at how awkward the words felt on his lips. 

“That’s fair,” Mollymauk chuckled. “That’s a good boundary.” 

Somehow, the words eased the tightness in Essek’s throat. “But I… I want you. I just…” 

Mollymauk’s fingers went still, a pressure at the base of his skull. “You just…?” 

Essek shut his eyes, waiting until he felt the ministrations start up again. Then, leaning into Molly’s hand, he murmured, “I don’t want to embarrass myself.” 

He could almost hear the smile in: “Well, that’s not possible.”

Essek cracked open an eye to glare at him, and Molly gave an apologetic grin. “Wrong thing to say, I know. But like, sex is _ weird.  _ You’re gonna end up doing something embarrassing eventually, it’s just a matter of if you’re gonna laugh it off or freak out.” His smile turned wicked, then, and he said, “And I promise, I am a  _ strong  _ proponent of everyone getting off if they want to. If you come and I don’t, you’re gonna help me. Sound good?” 

The boldness alone made Essek scoff, and yet he found it strangely reassuring. Not completely, not enough to erase his worries, but enough that he said,  _ “Sounds good.  _ You’re quite… audacious in bed, aren’t you.” 

Molly tweaked Essek’s ear, getting him to twitch away with a grimace. “I’m audacious everywhere. Plus I get off on putting arrogant pricks in their place. Maybe not  _ tonight _ but, Mister Thelyss, if you’re willing, I  _ promise  _ you will get yours.” 

He shivered. “And what happens if I turn it back on you?” An image flashed in Essek’s mind: Mollymauk under  _ him,  _ face down, gasping into a pillow. It made his belly feel tight.

Molly’s eyelids hooded, his voice a croon. “I’m counting on it. For  _ now,  _ though…”

He slid off the bed. Essek felt a pang of apprehension as he realized that Molly would likely need to travel all the way to his bedroom to get his supplies — only to watch him start digging through the pockets of his discarded clothes. When Mollymauk emerged with a condom and a small packet of lubricant, Essek was less than impressed. 

“You brought —” 

“I didn’t actually think you’d come dancing with me.” Molly shrugged, tossing the condom packet onto Essek’s belly. “I was planning on finding someone and coming back after, but this worked out pretty well. Pants off, please and thank you.” He wagged a finger at Essek’s tented slacks before unbuckling his own. 

Essek gave an exasperated sigh, sitting up to slide his pants down his legs. The atmosphere had shifted, Mollymauk’s irreverent attitude provoking Essek to match it. He almost didn’t even feel shy about stripping naked on the bed — not until he saw Molly appraising him with curious, hungry eyes. Then heat rushed back to his face. 

“Okay but I  _ do  _ wanna suck you off,” Molly muttered, and Essek nearly choked on his own spit. “What are your thoughts on wake-up blowjobs? Too fast? Alright.” 

He climbed over Essek again keeping up a running commentary. “Really hoping that this isn’t gonna be a one and done, Thelyss. We can have a  _ lot  _ of fun together.” 

“Better convince me, then,” Essek breathed, like he wasn’t aching for it. It got a laugh out of Molly as he squeezed lubricant over his fingers. Essek watched his hand disappear behind him, and Molly leaned over him, free arm braced on the mattress. His eyes were closed, letting Essek watch shamelessly as Molly bit his lip, the slight pinch to his brow that smoothed out with a blissful expression. 

Essek had only done that sparingly, curiosity more than anything pushing a few fingers into himself. It had been  _ enjoyable,  _ though the effort was usually too much compared to just stroking himself off when the urge hit, but now he wondered if he shouldn’t revisit the thought as he watched Molly open himself up. 

Molly made a breathy sound, short ears twitching and flushed. On an impulse, Essek cupped his face and drew him down into a kiss. He groaned against Essek’s lips, a wet sound making its way to his ears,  _ filthy,  _ making his cock pulse. He took a handful of Molly’s hair, delighting in the drawn-out whine it earned him. 

_ “Fuck,”  _ Molly breathed, voice shaky. His hips twitched, dick bumping against Essek’s belly. “Keep doing that.”

Essek obliged. Curiosity once again was what had him pushing himself up, just enough to get his lips under Molly’s jaw. He was certain that the neck was a near-universal erogenous zone, and the sound Mollymauk made confirmed it.  _ That  _ was nice, the shaking, whining breath that left him, a wordless plea for more. 

Essek took his time kissing and nipping over Molly’s skin. It wasn’t too different from testing a question, just far more hands on.  _ If _ he lavished too much attention in one place, say, the spot under his jaw,  _ then _ when he pushed his mouth to the junction of his shoulder and bit  _ down,  _ Mollymauk gave a strangled curse and bucked against him. 

“You’re dangerous,” Molly laughed, shivering. There was another slick noise, his fingers sliding free. “And you’re going to fuck me,  _ now,  _ please.” 

Essek wished he had the mind to say something clever, but his eyes were fixed on where his teeth had marked Mollymauk’s skin. 

Molly grabbed the condom still sitting on Essek’s belly and tore the packet open. He slid down, and the easy, confident way he took him in hand caught Essek off guard. He spat a curse, shifting into Molly’s grip. His eyes drifted shut, panting as he felt Molly shift, and then he threw his head down onto the pillow as wet heat laved over the head of his cock. 

“Hey, Essek.” Molly’s voice was sweet. When he looked, Essek nearly covered his eyes, seeing Molly low between his legs, lips an inch from his cock. “Promise me that whenever you need to unwind you’ll come ask me for help. I need an excuse to suck you off.” 

_ “Gods.”  _ Essek did cover his eyes then, and felt the hot breath of Molly’s laugh. He stroked Essek twice before letting go to roll the condom over his length. 

“Come on,” Molly breathed, tugging at Essek’s hip. “You wanted to fuck me, yeah?”

Essek rolled them over, reminding himself that Molly’s laugh was out of delight and not amusement at some unknown embarrassment. It was easier when he pressed his lips to Molly’s neck and heard the soft exhale, Molly purring underneath him as he returned the marks the tiefling had given him. 

He was stalling. As lovely as it was to get Molly squirming under him, he couldn’t deny that anxiety had knotted his stomach. If Molly noticed, he didn’t say a word, but a nip of Essek’s teeth had him arching in a way that put his thigh right between Essek’s legs. He moaned as he slid himself against Molly, the sparks of pleasure reminding him how he’d gotten here in the first place. 

“You…” Essek lifted his head, unable to look Molly in the face and ending up just murmuring into his ear, the shiver it got him gratifying. “Do you still want me?” 

The phrasing was awkward, made him wince, but Molly gave an intentional purr. “Obviously I’m naked under you for the  _ novelty.  _ Are you going to fuck me or do I have to do everything in this house?”

He took a breath in through the nose, mustering confidence. “ _ Hmm. _ ” Essek mustered enough of it to lean back, look at him, and smirk. “Is that what happens if I tell you to go fuck yourself?”

“Depends on how annoying you’re being.” Molly grinned back, and shifted his legs wide. 

Sliding into him was easy, just a moment of resistance and then sinking into a tight heat. Essek groaned, swearing the sound mingled with Molly’s own. There were arms around his shoulders, Molly’s voice low and whispering,  _ “That’s it, doll, feels good, yeah?”  _

Essek could only bow his head and rock himself deeper, every push getting a small hiss from Molly, a noise that would worry him if he hadn’t already heard what pain sounded like on him.  _ This _ was a good sound, breath leaving him and a slight groan as Essek found a rhythm. 

For a long stretch it was all he could focus on, heat under him and clutching around his cock. They found a rhythm, Molly shifting languidly back against him, Essek grinding himself deeper when his hips sat flush. Then he got his eyes to flutter open. 

Molly had a blissful expression, his eyes shut, a faint smile on his lips, head lolled back. He could be a cat in the sunlight as  _ content  _ as he looked. As if feeling Essek’s gaze on him, he lifted his eyelids just enough to meet Essek’s gaze, slits of red in the dark. 

“Oh, that’s nice,” Molly murmured, one hand lifting to touch Essek’s cheek, eyes opening wider and seeming to drink him in. It didn’t make much sense, but he didn’t bother trying to puzzle it out, not as Molly gripped his hair and guided him down to his neck. “Be a little rough with me, doll. If you wanna.” 

The words came slow to his tongue, but he mumbled, “Since you asked nicely.” Essek pressed his mouth to Molly’s neck and snapped his hips. Molly twitched and groaned, a soft  _ “Fuck, yes,”  _ telling him it was the right move as he grabbed Molly’s waist with one hand and fucked him deep. 

Driving hard into him felt like an indulgence, but Molly was writhing, a bite to his skin getting infernal curses and babbled encouragement. His hand was knotted in Essek’s hair, his knees drawn up and one leg hooked loosely around his waist, tail finding his ankle to curl around his calf. 

It was filthy, slick sound where his cock sank in deep and Molly’s shameless noise. Essek realized he was practically  _ growling,  _ teeth locked around the junction of his neck, and when he let go the mark was bitten deep into his flesh, promising a dark bruise. Every bit of pain only made Molly gasp louder, until his hand was between the two of them to roughly jerk himself off. 

His own peak was coming too fast. Essek was dizzy with it, his thrusts getting rougher as he buried himself in Molly again and again, finding his voice again to rasp,  _ “Close, I’m sorry —”  _

_ “Shhh-shhhh,”  _ Molly hushed, and then broke into a drunken laugh. “I want you to use me,  _ Esssek _ , don’t you dare stop.” 

It was the sound of his name that broke him, hissed out in pleasure. He pressed his face into Molly’s neck and fucked into him until that tight pressure gave, mind gone white as he twitched and ground himself deep with every pulse of his cock. 

He came to with a hand petting his hair, and Mollymauk’s crooning. 

“Was good for you, yeah?” He breathed. “I loved it, darling, you were perfect.” 

Essek basked in it, nuzzling into Molly’s neck. A thought slid into his brain, and he mumbled, “Did you…?”

_ “Yup.”  _ He popped the ‘p’ and snickered. “Thanks for making sure though, darling. I’ve been with plenty of men with  _ poor bedside manner.” _

Essek just sighed, and to his relief, Molly let himself fall into silence. 

The warmth of their bodies was addictive. Or, no. It was just  _ right.  _ Not an unnatural need, but the satisfaction that came of getting something built into their desires, contact and intimacy. They shifted until Essek’s head was tucked under Molly’s chin, both of them tangled up and breathing just out of sync. Molly’s fingers trailed up and down over the bone at his hip, and Essek’s wrapped loosely around the base of his tail. 

For several long minutes, nothing in the world felt wrong. It was just him and Mollymauk and the comfort of his bed, the post-coital contentment that had them both purring, a rare sound from Essek. 

When he started to feel a chill, and the dampness of the sheets became unpleasant, he pressed himself upright. Molly sat up with him, but stayed close, some point of contact always there between them. 

Essek frowned at the rumbled sheets, then snapped his fingers. Prestidigitation at least took the sweat and wrinkles away, and Molly whistled. “Sleeping with a wizard is amazing,” Mollymauk said. 

“Good to know I’m a  _ dime a dozen,” _ Essek rolled his eyes. He stood up, intent on a shower, and Molly followed with a laugh. 

_ “Nooo,”  _ he grinned. “I think you’re the first proper wizard I’ve gotten in bed. Mostly it’s bards trying to woo me with their fancy magic. I promise you’re special.” 

“Too late,” Essek drawled, but they shuffled to his shower together. 

Under the hot water, he was insistent on washing his own hair, but gave in to Molly’s wheedling to get soap down his back.  _ That  _ ended up with Essek holding onto the bar on the wall, shivering as Molly kneaded the muscles that framed his spine. 

“You are  _ insanely  _ tense,” Molly  _ tsk’d.  _ “Seriously. I meant what I said, about the blowjobs. Does wonders for your stress levels. Now I  _ do  _ ask for reciprocation, I’m not into  _ that  _ sort of denial.” 

Essek rolled his eyes, but privately thought it probably  _ would  _ be helpful, to have something to burn off some of the stress of his work. Then he gave a faint gasp as Molly found a spot that  _ hurt  _ in the best way, rubbing and kneading until he was at risk of letting his feet slip out from under him and had to call a breathy end to it.

They clambered out of the shower together, the room humid with steam. Molly had been perfectly comfortable with the too-hot temperatures Essek enjoyed. 

There was every chance he’d regret this, after a night’s rest cleared his head. What had this been but one impulsive decision after the next, spiraling  _ somehow  _ to Molly kissing him against the countertop, both of them with towels around their waists. 

It wasn’t a terrible outcome. He could be imprisoned. He could be dead. He could be alone. But instead he was kissing Mollymauk Tealeaf. 

The question crawled into his brain, spindly and many-legged, cooing in his ear:  _ And then what.  _

Essek eased back, and Molly let him go, pressing his lips a last few times along his jaw before stepping away. He made a face a moment later, tapping Essek’s forehead and smoothing the crease of his brow. “You’re overthinking already. Seriously.” 

Essek batted his hand away, though there was no vehemence in it. “What happens tomorrow?” He asked. 

“How do you mean?” 

“I mean…” Essek rubbed his temple. “What is this? You... have  _ amnesia.  _ You don’t even know if you wanted this.” 

Molly’s expression could wilt flowers. “That’s bullshit and you know it,” he said, leaving no room for protest. “Are  _ you  _ gonna have regrets tomorrow?” 

Essek glanced away. “Maybe,” he admitted. 

“That’s fine.” Molly shrugged.  _ “But.  _ I think it’s stupid. Is it good  _ right now?”  _

Essek took a moment to consider. Without the fear of tomorrow, of regrets and consequences, of Mollymauk  _ leaving,  _ of him learning like the rest exactly what he’d been letting touch him — “Yes.” 

“There you go.” Molly reached for him, waiting to let Essek pull away before cupping his face. He rubbed the shell of his ear between his thumb and forefinger, the sensation as pleasant as having him pet his hair. 

“If you want to keep this up,” Molly said, “you wanna kiss me goodmorning and goodnight and cuddle in bed, that’s fantastic. If you don’t, just don’t get pissy when I find someone else to go home with. And if you want me sometimes, but not always… same standard.” Molly gave him a pat on the cheek. “I’ll say right now that no matter what, I’m not really one for  _ exclusive,  _ but I’ll keep you in the loop, and I can be responsible if I need to. Sound good?”

Laid out like that, blunt and casual, it was hard to piece his worries together. They were still present, but disjointed and far away, and Essek nodded, and Molly smiled.  _ “Attaboy. _ But, while it’s still nighttime… kissing on the table?” Molly paused, then chuckled. “ _ Still  _ on the table, I mean. We’re not going downstairs to make out in the dining room.”

Essek huffed a laugh, and pulled him forward. So Molly kissed him. And then again after they’d brushed their teeth, and several more times on the way to bed, and one more time as he said goodnight before curling with his back to Essek, tail draped over his thigh. 

And he wondered if maybe, even if everything else was already ruined, maybe he could have just this one good thing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of relationship chatter at the end of the chapter: Essek immediately starts getting worried about the future. Mollymauk addresses one aspect of that, regarding their relationship. He puts the ball in Essek's court, saying that he'd like for them to continue being a thing, but that he won't be upset if Essek doesn't (in less concise words). He also warns Essek that he's not the sort for exclusive relationships, but that he would keep Essek informed and be responsible if the two of them continued to sleep together. Ultimately, it seems to be a purely physical relationship, with no mention of the emotional intimacy involved. Essek does not reflect on this, though it's uncertain if that's because it doesn't bother him or because he's too busy being worried about other stuff. 
> 
> \-------
> 
> And at last.... the fully explicit rating I've promised you. 
> 
> I'm not sure if I'm going to keep the nsfw chapters in here, or if I'll post them separately as apart of a series, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I guess it will depend on how important the sex is to the story, versus "Molly introduces Essek to bondage cause that's fun." In the meantime, hope you enjoyed! It's been a _hot_ second since I've written this sort of thing so I'm a little out of practice. 
> 
> And as usual, thank you so much for the large response to last chapter. I was so happy to see everyone else get just as excited as I was. I'll be getting to some responses a bit later! And please, continue letting me know what you think, it's hearing from y'all that keeps me motivated to write. <3 <3


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been too loooooong. How are we feelings, folks?
> 
> Sure enough A Bird in the Hand is officially no longer canon-compliant! It's kind of hilarious to think about how... certain events actually lined up with the plan for this story. ;)

Seeing this side of the world reminded Essek why they were envious of the Empire. 

The Ashkeeper peaks, at their southernmost edge, were bright with life. Even in the nighttime, the lands buzzed with a steady drone of noise, small and mundane creatures that would bear them little harm so far from the wastes of Xhorhas. 

They didn’t have these luxuries of rich growth and predators that thought you too big to be their next meal. The Dynasty’s lands were long blighted, and what stood today came from centuries of building from scrap. 

Essek was not much of a patriot, but he still had some love for his home, and still wanted to see it flourish. Beholding the verdant jungles that spilled out far below, he could not tamp down the resentment for what they’d been denied. 

One ear flicked back at the sound of approaching steps. Essek turned as Mollymauk caught up with him, his coat draped between his arms to carry several handfuls of small, round fruit. The smile on his face beamed joy and contentment as he shuffled up to Essek and held out his coat in offering. “Blueberry?” 

“Another fruit named after its color,” Essek observed, but reached for a few. 

“Make sure to take the firmer ones. A mushy berry will ruin your day,” Molly advised, and Essek rolled back a few that had been soft between his fingers. 

They were little blooms of sweetness on his tongue, and he couldn’t help but let a smile spread across his face. Xhorhas struggled to maintain their farms, druids and bards and clerics filtering out to the fields to bless the lands and enrichen the soil. While it let them till the land, magic had a way of leeching the flavor from anything that grew there. It left much to be desired beyond the edible fungi that naturally grew in the wastes.

“Good?” Molly prompted, smiling. “Hey, hey, hand over your bag, will you? I can’t carry these forever.” He reached for Essek’s pack without waiting for real permission, tugging a small pocket open to start shoveling berries inside. “Just let me know when you want some more!” 

When the berries were safely offloaded and the pocket closed, they fell into step back along the deer path they’d been following. An arc of one finger sent orbs of light bobbing through the air around him to illuminate their road once again. 

They had only been traveling a few hours, his teleportation spell landing them further than he might have liked. Mollymauk took to the mountains with glee, his hooves allowing him to hop up steeper slopes with ease while Essek simply let graviturgy boost him up the hills. It made him feel warm to see Molly scamper up to the crest of another slope and then spin around, absolute delight on his face as he drank in the world below them. 

“Mollymauk,” he called, and watched him twitch to attention. “More berries, please.”

“Get your ass up here first,” Molly shouted down. It was a blessing that he didn’t start his usual jeering.

Once Essek had joined him, Molly dutifully opened the pouch, delivering another handful of berries. Several steps down the path, he got a tug on his arm, and the tiefling’s mouth opened wide in expectation. 

“You could have gotten your own,” Essek pointed out, but fed him a berry. Teeth closed around his pointer finger, scraping as Essek pulled away. 

Molly waggled his eyebrows. Essek turned to walk away. 

“Gods’ sake, Essek,” Molly groaned. He caught Essek around the shoulders to pull him down, lips meeting. The hand that didn’t cradle blueberries found Mollymauk’s arm instead, squeezing in expectation for the filthy sort of kisses Molly liked to spring on him these days. Instead he found himself smiling as Molly pressed one, two, three, small pecks to his lips, and then another to his nose, and again to his lips, this time to mumble, “You’re such a hardass.” 

“You’ve done nothing to discourage me,” Essek pointed out, and Molly barked out a laugh.

It made travel impossibly slow, but Essek had never enjoyed himself more on this road. Earlier in his career, he had traveled with bands of Kryn soldiers, escorting him under the night, moving quick and quiet with the constant dread of being found out beyond their borders. As he developed his skills and reputation, he’d started coming alone, trusting his own resilience to make a quick escape if needed.

Neither had been enjoyable. Being alone had been an improvement, allowing him the peace to enjoy the change in scenery, but in recent months he’d recognized something that colored all memories of his past: a loneliness that ached to his core. 

Now he had Mollymauk.

The Ashkeeper peaks were home to drakes. They weren’t true dragons, lacking their power and intelligence, but hunting one down would fetch a good price in any shaded market. Essek wasn’t here for poaching, though — all he needed were the shed scales that lined their nests. 

They reached the peaks a few hours before dawn. The moons had slid out of view, leaving a bright field of stars overhead. He dismissed the lights around them, and they both took a moment to let their eyes adjust to the new darkness. 

Mollymauk stuck close from that point forward. His visual range was significantly reduced compared to Essek’s, and he followed close behind. When Essek’s hands drifted to his component pouches, Molly’s swords hissed from their sheathes. 

He had been to this drake’s lair a few dozen times already, and knew its patterns. A male, it always left the nest at night to hunt. It dwelled in a cave at the very peak of the Ashkeepers, where snow lined its crest well into summer. 

Mollymauk’s steps were near-silent in the frost. Essek cast Message, whispering  _ “Don’t stray from me,” _ before he set a hand on Molly’s shoulder and cast invisibility on them both. 

His grip tightened as Mollymauk’s image slid away. He kept pace, Molly’s tail weighed against his side as the tiefling eased towards the mouth of the cavern. The temperature only dropped further as they passed under its roof. The inside of the cave nearly crystalline with ice. Even invisible, the fog of their path mingled with that which circulated inside. 

Essek would give Mollymauk nudges to direct him through the tunnels, the two of them slipping around frozen bends, a veritable maze carved into the mountain. At its end was another cavern, this one with walls and burrows to form an uneven landscape. Essek knew that at the farthest point, the drake’s nest would be tucked away, filled with soft snow and plant matter and any shiny thing the creature could get off the ground. 

A low, rumbling sound made both of them freeze. It rolled through the cavern, bouncing off the frozen walls. They held their breaths, counting the seconds of silence before it was chased by a hissing, sucking sound. 

Snoring. That was the sound of snoring. The drake was still in its nest. 

Molly’s hand replaced his tail, a weight at Essek’s side. He dragged it up, to his arm, his shoulder, skimming fingers along the length of his neck and over his jaw, until he’d found Essek’s ear and held it in place. Heat burned his cheeks as he leaned down and Molly pressed close.

The tiefling’s lips were practically on top of his ear as he whispered,  _ “Still good to go?”  _

His hand dipped to cup Essek’s cheek, so Molly felt it when he nodded. There was a squeeze to his jaw, and a moment later, Molly slipped away. 

The absence terrified him. Essek pulled a piece of iron from his pouch and clutched it in his hand. Even prepared, he was still too far away to cast. He watched Molly’s path through the mist, eyes fixated on every uneven swirl of fog until it grew too dense to parse. 

Then his eyes were focused on the drake’s nest, which hovered at the very edge of his vision. He held his breath, blood pumping in his ears. 

The edges of the nest were lined with glinting shapes — silver scales. It was the sudden loss of one’s light that alerted him to Molly’s position, watching as a shape lifted, and vanished. Then, seconds later, another. Then a third. All the while, the drake in the nest snored peacefully away. 

One by one, Molly plucked the scales from the nest and tucked them safely away. Essek had almost let himself breathe again — and then a scraping sound came from above. 

Essek froze. He prayed Molly had done the same, ears straining for the noise. It was the echo of scrabbling talons growing steadily louder, and closer. His eyes widened as he stared at the roof of the cavern, where one of those burrows tunneled up through the mountain to open air, where another silver snout was poking through. 

The drake had apparently found itself a mate. Now the new one crawled onto the ceiling, something bloody clutched in its mouth. Its wings spread, bringing it gliding down to the cavern floor, Essek’s heart leaping in his chest as it landed on the edge of the nest. It was not, apparently, on top of Mollymauk, for the drake only siddled back onto the ice and began to scrape at it with its claws. 

Mollymauk was invisible. He only needed to stay still and wait for the creature to settle down. Essek repeated this in his head as he watched the chunk of meat — a torn-off deer’s haunch, he was sure — get tucked down in the ice and then blasted with a stream of pure frost from the creature’s throat. It nudged the heap left over, muzzle coming away coated in snow, and for just an instant it looked like it was going to curl up peacefully in its next.

Then its nostrils flared. The pupils dilated, a snarl echoing through the cavern, this time the breath exhaled was more than just snow — it was a cone of jagged ice, to cut and freeze and kill. Essek felt the thread of his spell snap, Mollymauk flickering into view as a silhouette ducking away from the blizzard. 

Essek’s feet hit the ground. He moved faster this way, darting forward across ragged ice. The other drake was waking now, as an arc of flaming orbs formed a halo above Essek’s head and then blared jets of fire into its mate. 

Molly tried to retreat, scrabbling back. The awoken drake caught sight of him and then shrieked and lunged, the first snap of its jaws missing but talons catching his thigh. Molly snarled. His sword flashed down, Essek threw out a hand. The velocity of his swing doubled just before he struck, driving the blade deep into the meat of the creature’s back. 

The second, the male drake, jumped from behind Mollymauk. Essek rushed forward, squeezing the chunk of iron tight enough that it cut into his palm and willing the beast to freeze in place. His magic curled around it for only a moment before it broke free of his grasp. It snapped at Mollymauk with a vengeance, clothes shredding around its teeth and jaws slicked with blood.. 

Molly couldn’t escape, barred in by two of the beasts. Essek snarled to himself, shifting to an angle where he could line up their thrashing bodies.  _ “Mollymauk,”  _ he called. The tiefling caught his gaze, saw the electricity as it pulled into Essek’s grip, and dove for the female’s tail. 

He swung forward. The air pressure dropped, and dark purple lightning burst across the floor. It caught the female in the skull, its mate springing away with a hiss. Molly took the distraction, swinging viciously into the already bloodied drake as it staggered and wailed. 

Essek hesitated for only a moment before getting even closer. He could get them out, he just needed to get to Mollymauk first. 

And then the female turned, frost billowing between its teeth, and both of them were surrounded by pure cold. Essek shuddered, his legs giving way, knees hitting the ground. Snowflakes clung to his eyelashes, blurring his vision, skin stinging where needles of ice pricked through his flash. 

He panted, gulping in a breath before he pushed himself upright. Mollymauk was still on his feet, defending himself against both of the beasts with blood dripping down his chin. 

One step forward. Fresh blood drooled from Molly’s eyes, but the tail still caught him in the legs, made him stagger. 

Another step. Molly dug one sword into the ice, the other glowing with radiant light. He lunged, dragging a crimson line into metallic scales. 

Another step. The drakes both snarled, jaws parting in near unison, two mouths full of ice to expel. 

Essek’s hand clamped onto Mollymauk’s shoulder, and he  _ pulled.  _

They landed outside the cave, several hundred feet down the mountain. The shift in pressure made his ears pop as they collapsed in the grass. 

For a moment, they both just caught their breath, adrenaline making his hands shake and his head swim. He listened as Mollymauk regained his bearings, shoving himself onto his knees.

“Can we run  _ one  _ gods- _ damned  _ errand,” Mollymauk snarled, wrestling Essek’s pack away, “without something getting its teeth into me.” 

There was the clink of glass. Essek rolled over, pushing himself to sit up. Mollymauk had pulled out a pair of potions, and was holding both of them out to him.

Essek frowned. “You take one,” he said, lifting a single bottle from his grip. He braced himself and downed it, the grimace from its taste giving way to relief as warmth flushed over his skin again. 

Molly shrugged, pinched his nose, and did the same. Essek had to chuckle as Molly gagged and dove for the blueberry pouch. 

He watched as Molly crammed a handful past his lips, then threw himself onto the ground. The grunt and groan that followed suggested the potion hadn’t patched everything up just yet. 

He chuckled, and then settled his chin in one hand, elbow propped on a knee. “That was unfortunate,” Essek sighed. “I’ll have to go back to making this trip in a group if there’s a pair of them, now.” He was glad they hadn’t actually managed to kill one. If the drakes abandoned that nest, he’d be out of good components. “At least information means the trip wasn’t an utter waste.”

Molly, mouth stained with blueberry juice, suddenly perked up. He gave a wet, food-muffled noise that made Essek grimace before digging into the pockets of his coat. When he pulled his hands free, it was with a bundle of silver scales each. 

Essek’s face lit up. He took the scales, even those streaked with blueberry juice, to examine them for a moment and slip them into his component pouch. Excitement thrummed in his chest. That would restore an entire batch of potions  _ and  _ leave him some leftover material for experimentation — he could  _ kiss  _ Mollymauk for that. 

He  _ could.  _ That was the truth. Essek peeked back at Molly, to find the tiefling sitting up again with a squinty-eyed grin.

It took a moment to steel his courage before he cupped Molly’s face and pressed a kiss to his lips. The shock and then  _ delight  _ that shone in his eyes after had some odd pride flaring in Essek’s chest. 

He’d almost grown comfortable with the arrangement. Mollymauk almost always initiated, pulling him down for kisses or burrowing into his space, clinging in bed when the night was cold. Sometimes he’d push Essek down in that bed and leave marks on his neck that the mantle would hide. Sometimes Essek came home carrying tension in every muscle and Molly would nudge him against the wall and sink to his knees, or lay out across the bed on his belly, tail curling, voice goading.

Turning the tables was fun. Seeing the warmth in Molly’s eyes made his heart do something strange but not quite unpleasant. 

“Let’s get a little further out before resting,” Essek suggested, before pulling Molly another five hundred feet down the mountain. 

He cast a spell, then, one that Molly had seemed delighted by when he first heard of it.  _ Magnificent Mansion  _ was a requirement for travel. The doorway shimmered into being, and the two of them vanished inside. There were a few plants Essek will need to gather under sunlight come morning, but for now, they could lay in a bed and rest. 

And they did. They sank onto a mattress, injuries still too sore to do anything but curl around each other and bask in shared heat after being doused in the mountain’s chill. Meditation was easy to slip into, the deepening of Molly’s breaths becoming the metronome to carry him somewhere beyond conscious thought. 

These were moments that made him feel like even in the worst of times, things could still be okay. The yawning pit of his future had given way to a flicker of light.

_  
  
  
_

He was woken by the feeling of a spell shredding through the threads of his magic. 

Essek’s heart skipped the moment before he was shunted into another space. He hit the ground in a heap, gasping in one breath before the air became flame.

A scream ripped from his throat. He thought for a moment it was echoing, until he realized Mollymauk was shrieking as well. In the span of seconds, every inch of his flesh was sent crawling with agony, blood pulsing heavy under his skin and leaving him stunned when the inferno fell away. 

Arrows had embedded in his body almost without him noticing. He reached for his component pouch, grabbing hold of Mollymauk as they staggered upright. He’d burned too much magic to bring them home, but maybe he could put enough distance, could  _ hide —  _

The spell crumbled to ash. Essek’s gaze focused on the caster, horror twisting in his gut. Mollymauk met his eyes, then shoved him, barking,  _ “Just run!”  _

So he ran, dragging Mollymauk behind him. His hand lifted to try again, just one successful cast to save them. 

A series of snaps pierced his ears before the bolts drove under his skin. He pitched forward, registering only pain the second before the world turned to black. 

_  
  
  
_

Elsewhere, it was raining. 

They stood on a hillside, the clouds opened up to a frigid downpour. It wasn’t a storm, yet, but the force of the wind was a warning. 

Two pairs of hands dug through slick mud, finding the earth below loose and pliant, the grave they had dug so long ago now revealing itself as empty. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are hitting the endgame for ABitH. My current belief is I will have one, _maybe_ two more chapters under this title before we move over to Part Two. God help me find a title before then.
> 
> Please please let me know what you think! Writers block hit me SO hard these last few weeks but I was so determined to get back to y'all. You've been so sweet and so supportive of this story, I hope you'll continue to enjoy it <3


	13. Chapter 13

Jester returned to her body with a faint hitch in her breath. When her vision cleared, it left just the faces of her family staring at her, apprehension and expectation and everything that was soon to become disappointment. 

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d failed them. _And him._

 _“Slippery, that one,”_ the Traveler murmured. _“Apologies.”_

Then he faded, nothing more than the faint squeeze of a hand on her shoulder before it slipped away. 

“I —” Jester’s voice died in her throat. She swallowed, then shook her head. “I couldn’t find him. I — _but he has to —_ ”

The others shifted, Fjord covering his mouth with a hand, Beau immediately starting to pace. Automatically, Jester sought out Caduceus, disappointed to see him looking just as baffled as the rest of them.

“Maybe he’s not back,” Beau murmured. Her hand was raking through her hair, face turned away from the grave. “Maybe someone just — dug him up. _Fuck.”_ She squeezed her eyes shut, pulling in a deep breath. They snapped open again as she burst out, “What about that — that Cree? Your dad said she jumped ship, right? And she was all _over_ Molly, maybe she —” 

Caleb held up a hand. He’d been pensive, kneeling in the mud and staring into the empty grave. “That is a good theory, Beauregard,” he said, voice slow and careful. “We should not jump to conclusions yet, but that is worth looking into. Additionally —” he lifted his head, looking to Jester now. “Just because the spell did not connect does not mean he _isn’t_ back. Is that right?” 

He toyed with the chain of his amulet all the while. 

Caleb could not say he was particularly close to one Mollymauk Tealeaf. He’d been torn right down the middle by that person, and death had given him no reprieve from that conflict. 

Mollymauk Tealeaf had pushed him against a wall, getting in his face with a snarl disguised as a grin. 

Mollymauk Tealeaf had pressed lips to his forehead, promised _there’s time for that later,_ and pulled him from the very fire Caleb had created. 

He didn’t know if he even _liked_ that strange little tiefling, but he wanted to know. He _needed_ to know. Curiosity had always been among his downfalls, and he’d said and insisted and _begged_ the Nein to come to his grave, and here it was empty, and Caleb felt the strangest coil of hope in his chest that maybe now he could get some _answers._

“Even if he _is_ alive, it might not be him,” Beau pointed out. The coil turned to a sharp twist. Caleb shut his eyes. “Last time it was that — that Nonagon, Lucien. Maybe he’s back. Or — or maybe it’s just a clean slate, every time.” 

For once in his life, Caleb did not want to ask questions. There were _so many_ to be asked, though, and Beauregard asked them all, while they stood in the rain and offered nothing in the way of answers. Sometimes it was best to just stay quiet. Sometimes you needed more, to know if you were asking the right questions.

“Should I scry on Cree?” Jester asked, in a moment of quiet. Her voice was small. 

“Yes — _yes!”_ Beau pointed at her. “Scry on Cree, if _anyone_ has their hands all _over_ this —” 

Out came the focus, and they watched again as Jester’s eyes went white. This time it held, eyeballs shifting in their sockets, changes in expression that he did his best to read. 

The minutes stretched out, but she snapped out of it before the duration. She frowned, and then shook her head. “I don’t… I don’t know. It didn’t look like she was doing anything? She was just sitting down somewhere, it sounded like a pretty shitty bar.” 

“Shadycreek?” Beau suggested _._

Jester gave a helpless shrug, quickly looking overwhelmed. 

It was Caduceus who piped up next: “Jester,” he started, voice slow and considering. “Can you still talk to plants?” 

Caleb watched her pull in one shaking breath, then another. Then she nodded, and knelt in the rain-slick grass, and all he could do was stand uselessly about and hope it would offer something more.

  
  
  


Mollymauk woke to a sharp heat in his cheek. He gasped, pain bristling under his skin as his hands immediately flew for his swords — only for both arms to snap something taught between them and go no further.

There were manacles on his wrists, binding them in front of his body. It wasn’t exactly a position he was unfamiliar with, though he only enjoyed it _sometimes_. The man poised above him, hand lifted for another strike, that was not-unfamiliar in the exact same way. 

Molly gathered his wits, flashed a grin, and said, “Don’t suppose I can call red —” 

The hand cracked across his face again. His teeth sliced into his lower lip. Molly gasped, then spat, getting a curl of satisfaction as red spattered his attacker’s face. “Fucker,” he snapped, any humor lost from his voice, and only slightly regretted it as that blood-stained face contorted with rage. 

He reached for something else, Molly tensing at the sight of something heavy and blunt, only to freeze at the gruff _“Enough.”_

There was another person in the room. From his position on the ground, Molly couldn’t see them. His eyes strained for what he _could_ — he was in a tent of some form, the light backing it suggesting the sun was well up. There was a man here, Dwendalian accent, and a second person of the same background, and they had clearly captured both him and —

 _Essek._ It was a cold shot down his spine. 

“Who the hell are you?” He asked, voice tense and head tipping back. He only caught a flash of blonde hair in the edges of his vision. A chair creaked, then the sound of heavy footsteps and clanking armor coming closer. Then they loomed over him: a human, blonde and androgynous, wrinkles in the face from frowning too much. 

“Captain Albrechtsen,” they reported. “And you are?”

“Like hell I’m —” 

A metal boot slammed into his stomach. He hacked out a cough, convulsing and then rolling onto his side. 

“Name, please.” 

“Fuck you,” Molly rasped. 

_“Name.”_ The boot lifted. 

“Fine! Fine, it’s — it’s Bren.” His mind was racing too quickly to do anything but fall back on an old pseudonym. 

“Bren what?” The captain’s voice was significantly more pleasant now. 

“Fletching,” he blurted, hoping his breathlessness sold it as desperation. Gods, he _was_ desperate.

“Bren Fletching,” they repeated, with a cordial nod. “And what is your relationship to Essek Thelyss?” 

He swallowed. Essek was absolutely the target, then. Essek was likely alive, if they wanted information, because otherwise they would just _kill_ him. “I’m his — his, uh…” 

“Any day now.” While Albrechtsen made no move, their lackey tapped what looked like a rectangular bat on the toe of his boot. Molly shuddered, his fear entirely authentic. 

“Bodyguard?” Too uncertain. “We’re — we’re kind of a _thing_ so I don’t know the ethics of being his employee but, hell, the pay’s good, the sex is good —” 

The lackey gagged in an exaggerated manner as Albrechtsen’s face pinched. “I do not need the details about how a crick beds a devil, thank you,” they huffed. 

Something about their tone made rage lick up his throat. He’d been called _devil_ enough times in his life, and the way they referred to Essek, like a _thing_ instead of a person. He spat, infernal laced with magic twisting from his throat, _“You’ll learn plenty about devils when they’re flaying you in the fucking hells —”_

He had the glee of seeing Albrechtsen flinch, the enchantment piercing their ears, before he was gagging again with another boot in his stomach. This time he heaved, stomach too empty for anything to come up but spit pooling in his mouth. 

“Gag him,” Albrechtsen ordered. “We’re leaving soon.” 

And as much as he twisted and spat and bit at the hands that wrestled with him, he couldn’t stop the man from snapping a mask onto his face. It clamped uncomfortably tight, binding over his mouth and nose and locking his jaw in place. He couldn’t speak through it, couldn’t pry it off or shake it off or do _anything_ to get free. 

Panic was clawing at his chest as the thug attached a lead to his manacles, dragging him upright by his wrists to pull him outside. The sun was painfully bright compared to the dimness of the tents. He squinted, and then staggered as the chain yanked him forward. When his eyes adjusted, the scene was similar to a military camp: large tents set up, armored people marching around. He couldn’t be sure how to tell the difference between soldiers and mercenaries, and didn’t particularly _care,_ either. 

He did care about seeing Essek. 

The man had been stripped of his mantle. He looked exceedingly fragile without its bulk, just the thin underclothes, partially torn. He didn’t just have manacles on his wrists — his hands were consumed by a set of cylindrical devices, their weight making him slouch as his arms hung down. A mask similar to Mollymauk’s had been strapped to his face. 

Essek’s eyes were nearly shut, narrowed to slits in the full sun above. Even from a distance, Molly could see the bruising that welled up from the edge of his mask, making rage boil in his stomach. 

He couldn’t call out. He couldn’t do _anything_ but stare as they were forced into a marching order, Essek placed several bodies ahead of Mollymauk for the expedition ahead. 

They walked for hours. Mollymauk had traveled across most of the wastes himself, after his stolen horse had been claimed by a _far_ too-large bird, but a day’s travel at a steady pace, uphill, without food or water — his vision was swimming in the late afternoon. 

He almost missed it when Essek slumped over and collapsed. The line staggered, grunts and complaints rippling through the ranks. Someone kicked Essek in the back, and Molly snarled as he lunged forward, only to be snapped short by his chain. 

He couldn’t do a single thing as Essek laid in the dirt, breath too shallow. In time, another figure was led to him. They knelt down, a radiant glow flickering over their hands, and then Essek was stirring. He was hauled to his feet, placed back in the line, and onwards they marched.

It was proof at least that they didn’t want him dead. Not yet. 

Night was falling when they stopped to make camp. Essek was chained to a post they staked deep into the ground, and Mollymauk was dragged to him. It was only then that Essek’s eyes fell upon him, and Molly didn’t even bother resisting as his lead was locked in place. 

When they were left somewhat alone, Essek’s shoulders slumped, his head falling forward. He seemed to heave for every breath, and all Molly could do was lean into his side and rumble a nervous purr. 

Essek was trembling. Constant tremors would wrack into violent shaking, though if it was fear or exhaustion or some combination of the two, Mollymauk had no means of telling.

They were fed at the very least, though only in the vaguest sense, and only one at a time. Molly was first, his mask removed and two beads forced into his mouth as he thrashed against it. Neither _seemed_ to be poison — one stopped the cramping hunger, the other soothed his dried-out mouth. It wasn’t half the satisfaction that food and water would have been. Then they removed Essek’s mask next, intending to do the same. 

Essek _gnashed_ at them, making even Molly jump. He snapped his teeth and spat, so suddenly that it took Molly a moment to process he was hearing infernal: _“Get out. You’re useless like this, so run!”_

The guard slammed him across the face. “Wanna say that in _common_ you filthy crick?” They rumbled, grabbing his face. 

“I said,” Essek sneered, “you have the looks of a rot troll and wits to match.” 

He got a fist in his teeth for that, but Mollymauk cackled behind his mask until they took it out on him, too. 

Essek’s words stuck in his head, as they were dragged off to separate tents to be put to sleep. Essek couldn’t cast magic, that much was obvious. The gag and the cuffs promised that much. 

But there wasn’t much that could keep Mollymauk down. No swords nor cuffs nor graves had ever been enough. So he laid awake, anxiety making his heart flutter fast but eyes hooded shut and muscles limp. He shifted and turned as people do in their sleep, did everything to convince his guard that he was out. And when their breaths had evened, asleep at their post, Molly found the physical presence of his soul and cloaked it over his flesh. 

Except he didn't. Mollymauk's heart skipped. It was an instinctual thing, searching for the in-between that lay beside the material, and finding something cutting him away from that shift left him feeling isolated. Powerless. _Empty._

A shudder wracked his frame. He sucked in a breath, slow and steady, letting his pulse slow. It was just another obstacle.

Mollymauk rolled himself over, picking out his guard in the darkness. He was slumped over, mouth open and jaw in one hand. The table he was seated at held a one-person card game. A dagger rested in his belt.

He couldn't come through the front flaps in the tent, not when he knew there were more guards outside. The campfire's light flickered through the canvas, giving away the shadows of those around it. So: he would just carve a new exit through the back.

Molly rolled himself up onto his hooves, slipping across the tent's floor to his guard's side. His hands were bound, but not so tight he couldn't _grip_ something. All it took was an awkward bend of the body to grab the hilt of the dagger and ease it from its sheath, the loss of its weight not provoking so much as a snort from its owner. Then he moved to the back, not letting himself slow down as he shoved the dagger's blade through the canvas and forced it down _._ It wasn't smooth, or even quiet, each harsh ripping noise closing in on his ears. It _was_ enough to wake his guard, Mollymauk escaping through the gash in the tent as the man bolted awake.

He was halfway to the horses when a shout broke the camp's silence, abandoning stealth for speed. The sudden uproar made the horses startle, hooves stamping as Mollymauk bolted to the end of their line. Their tack was still on, a lead tying them to the posts staked around the camp. He brought the knife down, severing the rope and tossing both aside to haul himself up into the saddle.

The first snap of a crossbow bolt was what got her to run, rearing about and taking off into the night in a full racing gallop as the camp roared awake behind him. 

  
  
  


The horse couldn’t take him forever, not after it had already made more than a full day’s travel. Still, the poor beast didn’t refuse him when he urged it to run again and again and again. 

The sensation of being hunted clung to him. It festered beneath his skin, anxiety that drove him past exhaustion to flee mindlessly ahead, body craving a small space to cram himself into and curl up and hide, shaking, until surely it had been so long his hunter had lost his trail. Through the night, Molly craned his head back until he wondered if he could accidentally snap his own neck, waiting for the hour when he’d see his pursuers streaming after him

He never did, though. Maybe they’d taken the time to get their armor and saddles ready. Maybe they hadn’t realized it was their prisoner who had taken the horse and ran. Maybe they’d checked to see if Essek had gone, too. Whatever the reason, dawn broke and in the full light of morning, Mollymauk found himself alone. 

The sky was just brightening to blue as he slid off the horse’s back, taking it by the reins to guide it towards a stream running through the grass. He knelt down, cupping water in his hands and letting frigid snowmelt soothe his throat. 

He choked, then, not on water but on a sob. Hot tears blurred his vision and spilled over as he gave a wretched sound, hugging his own stomach tight. He bent over on his knees to heave aching breaths into the grass. 

What was he going to do? Essek was captured, and Mollymauk was the only one who knew, alone in the wilderness of the Empire without even a blade to wield. He was useless. He was helpless. The bite of the cuffs had given way to a constant burn, blood trickling from beneath them as hard metal cut into his flesh.

Molly knelt there and cried, digging his fingers into the mud and opening his mouth to _scream_ against the blades of grass that cut fine lines into his skin. He screamed until his throat was raw and he’d run out of tears, and Mollymauk scooped water from the stream into his dried-out mouth only to cough most of it up again when he choked on a hiccuping breath.

He drank. He laid in the grass, until the sky was fully lit. Then he pulled himself back up onto the horse, and they kept walking. 

Mollymauk wouldn’t stop until he found a treeline to shelter in, and the rest was more for the horse than himself. Still, he nodded off almost the moment his pulse had slowed enough to let him. When he opened his eyes again, the sun had shifted dramatically, shadows long and blue in the late afternoon. 

He lead his mount through the forest and then beyond, evening threatening the sky. They crested a hill as it slid into nightfall, stars winking into view, the moon shining a pale glow across the fields. 

Molly stared up at her, eyes hooded with exhaustion. He was never the praying type. Or, he didn’t _think_ he was. These days, there’d been less and less blur in his memory, the days of the circus filtering back slowly. He remembered learning to sew, spooling thread in the back of the caravan under moonlight, patching holes that human eyes couldn’t see in the darkness.

He didn’t know why he followed her, but it felt natural, comfortable. And if it was rude to pray when you felt no real reverence for the god in question, well, Mollymauk hardly had a reputation for following social norms. 

It was strange to know these things about himself without really _knowing._ He hunkered down, face buried in his knees. He’d only walked a few hours, and here he was already wanting to lay back and sleep. 

It wasn’t safe here. He wanted the warmth of a campfire. He longed for the safety of a myriad of bodies, countless voices to distract him. Yasha, tall and sturdy, would put an arm around his shoulders and drape him in the comfort of safety and pressure, and he’d slump against her and drift off halfway through one of Gustav’s stories. 

And after them, there were others. It was a loose, messy, distrustful thing, but he’d been sure — his old family had fallen to pieces but this one was only just starting to line up its fractured edges and _gods_ , how could he miss people he barely remembered? 

Over the edge of the hillside, a light flickered into being.

Mollymauk froze, staring at it, a distant campfire. Even from so far away, he could see multiple figures now silhouetted against it: people, horses, bedrolls. Before he could think better of it, Mollymauk hoisted himself up into his mount’s saddle to lead her down the slope. 

“If they’re friendly, we can sleep some more,” he promised her. The distant smell of cooking meat made his stomach twist and his mouth water. He _really_ hoped they’d be friendly.

They turned out to be a group of trappers, gathering meats and furs to be sold, their catches strung up for the night. When they noticed his approach, a few of them reached for bows and swords, tentatively enough that he put his hands up in a calming motion. 

“Evening!” He greeted. “Sorry to bother you fine folk, but I have gotten a _bit_ turned around and — _why,_ is that _Zenny?_

A group of vaguely familiar, wide eyes cast upon him, and flash with recognition. 

“Long time no see,” he laughed, and laughed _hard,_ relief sweeping over him in a dizzying wave as he slid from his horse’s back and spread his arms as far as the cuffs would let him. “So, catch me up. How’s the new management beentreating you?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you don't recognize the name Zenny (god knows I dug through google), that would be the leader of the syphilis bandits, as employed by Mollymauk!
> 
> EDIT: I wrote something inconsistently! I realized that For Reasons he should not have been able to use his ethereal step ability, and his handcuffs should still be on, so that has been corrected. 
> 
> Running up against the endgame, now! As you can see, ABITH is officially apart of a _series_ on Ao3, where I will be keeping all content that exists in this particular timeline. 
> 
> There is currently a fic up in the series that is just an E-rated shadowmauk fic. I maaay end up taking it down since it doesn't look like it's got a lot of enthusiasm, _but_ I wanted to wait to post the next abith chapter in case it's more an exposure issue than a quality issue. 
> 
> That being said! Please let me know what you think so far <3 I know I'm going a little off the rails in terms of tone compared to the rest of the story, so I hope you're still enjoying it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a little while! I apologize, finals and then the holidays were kicking my ass.

Mollymauk was beginning to think he was developing  _ baggage,  _ which really went against his entire philosophy. Those Empty moments couldn’t count. That was tied to the body, not  _ him.  _ It wasn’t like he could complain that the body he resided in now had a few broken pieces — beggars can’t be choosers.

Spending days locked up in cuffs and dragged around by his wrists was apparently leaving _some_ kind of a mark. His skin crawled beneath the metal, every pull of the chain making his stomach twist tighter and tighter. Desperation had gotten great enough to let Zenny try to take a hatchet to the chain, nearly losing a finger when they learned the hard way that the damn thing couldn’t be broken. 

Which left Molly in the middle of the Empire, locked in unbreakable restraints, with no one to help him except a bunch of barely-reformed bandits.  _ Lovely  _ reformed bandits, of course, he’d be very proud of them if he weren’t fighting a constant battle against rising panic. 

Mollymauk remembered what they’d been when they first came up upon them — their leader turned to ash, poor saps looking  _ sick  _ as they realized how far in over their heads they were. Now they looked like respectable folk, the right kind of scraggly for hunters with pockets weighted from selling furs to the good people instead of robbing them blind. 

He was remembering a lot of things these days. It wasn’t the revelation he’d always expected it to be, no sudden rush or spark of a light, just names and faces coming to mind the way they always should, like he’d never lost them in the first place. 

It made the absence cut deeper. For the first time in his few years of life, Mollymauk felt regret simmering under his skin. Just weeks, months ago,  _ they _ had been one floor below him. People he loved. People he gave his life for. He’d hidden away instead of running to them, and what a price he got to pay for it now. 

For a moment, he and the former bandits trudged along the road to Zadash, Mollymauk was there with them again. A cart to lie in, Jester’s shadow cast on him from her place on its edge, backlit by the sunset. Caleb, caked in dirt as always, with his nose in a book. Beau and Yasha marching along beside, Nott atop a horse and tossing questions their way, Fjord interjecting with dry humor on his tongue. It was a feeling whole and right, the weight of  _ potential _ resting comfortably around his shoulders as he looked at this mismatched band and thought this could be something  _ amazing. _

Then Molly was back again, without them and feeling carved out to an emptiness that was entirely new. 

When they reached the city, Zenny and company did not go in with him, but handed him a traveling cloak and a small bag of coins. It was the best they could offer, and knowing that, Molly could give them a smile he meant. 

Even as near strangers, part of him missed their company as he turned to the gates of Zadash alone. 

  
  
  


Essek hadn’t walked this much in nearly a century.

Collapsing wouldn’t work in his favor the second time around. If he lost consciousness, he wasn’t sure he’d wake up in one piece.

Mollymauk’s escape had proved at least one thing: Essek’s captors wanted him alive. His body still ached with the bruises they’d left, but they had stopped just short of anything that would prevent him from walking. Come morning he was on his feet again, being dragged under the full, piercing light of the sun. 

The fading afternoon came too late to provide any relief to his eyes. His vision was shot, the world reduced to smears of shapes and blinking dots. Even when he blinked the tears out of his eyes, dripping steadily in his body’s attempt to guard his vision, there was no clarity to be found. 

For the time being, he was blind. 

All they had to take from him was his hearing and then he’d truly have no lower to fall. His ankles were connected by a chain, his hands bound in cases. A muzzle was clamped over his face with spikes that dug into his cheeks. They used restraints of a similar design in the dynasty. Bound hands and a silenced tongue could incapacitate nearly any mortal spellcaster. 

The sound of a crunch had his ears swiveling. Footsteps drew close to him, until a blurred form entered his periphery. Then he staggered as weight slammed into his side, the lead attached to his cuffs snapping his arms at a harsh angle. He grunted, stumbling in the attempt to regain his balance, ears flattened and hot as a chorus of laughter bubbled around him.

Essek’s fingers twitched. He imagined the runes to pull the moisture from their veins and leave them cracking with parched necrosis, to send gravity pressing down with such force that bruises bloomed before the flesh split around its weight. 

But it was just that: a conjured fantasy. Without his hands and his voice, the Weave was little more than a reverberation under his nails, all the hatred in his bones worthless without the means to spin it into being. 

And as soon as he was steady on his feet, he was tugged and stumbling forward. His ears strained for the voices in front of him, catching only hurried tones.

He hadn’t expected the empire to be his downfall. All his nightmares told of his execution by the Dynasty’s hand, preceded by the tortures he himself had dealt before. And yet, it was into the Empire’s lands he was dragged, and he could only wonder by whose order it had been. 

A frantic, ugly thought swarmed his brain, hissed that it had been the very friends he’d betrayed only paying back the favor. 

_ If they had,  _ Essek reminded himself, pushing a breath against his mask,  _ it would be the Dynasty who took me.  _

And that was what he reminded himself for the days he spent marching. At night, panic clawed up in his chest, the fear his vision had been damaged beyond repair. He took to keeping his eyes shut as he walked in a vain hope that would protect them. 

Even if he was well and truly blind, maybe Jester would be able to fix it. Maybe they would find him. Somehow, miraculously. A message sent with no connection, the antimagic cuffs that bound him halting Jester’s voice. The realization something was  _ wrong,  _ maybe they’d look, maybe they’d even find him. 

But probably not. Essek didn’t bother shoving his heartache aside. Whatever fate he was marching to, he knew it wouldn’t leave him the luxury of sadness.

And then, one day, the routine came to an end. Days of marching and nights of exhaustion so thick his meditation slid into unconsciousness… it all came to a close with a distinct and familiar  _ crack  _ of displaced air: the sound of teleportation. 

And then there was another familiar sound. This one was a voice, low and steady. 

“Mister Thelyss,” intoned Ludinus Da’leth, making Essek go utterly still. “I apologize for the inconvenience of this meeting.” 

  
  
  


The breeze threatened to steal Molly’s cloak. He had to keep his fingers wrapped tight in its material to keep it bound around him and his restraints hidden. One glimpse at his cuffs and any guard looking for an easy victim would be on his tail, so Molly kept the cloak tight over his bound arms as he trudged through Zadash. 

It was disorienting. Each step felt like he was walking through a different time, late autumn chill and jubilant voices. The noises of the city blurred from its cacophony to a different sound, to —

_ — howls and cheering on all sides and above. Sand grits under his hooves, kicked up in his face by the lumbering of a creature both broad and tall. He runs to it, sliding his scimitar under the flesh of its thigh, and then it brings its club down — _

The Victory Pit stood over the city, quiet and empty in the fading light. He passed a bakery, saw a pair of humans huddled close with a fresh loaf of bread clutched in one’s hands. The scent was warm. His mouth watered.

_ Hot mead, cupped between his hands. The honey is sweet on the tongue. He grabs Beau’s wrist and brings it up to steal a sip from her cup, laughing when her recoil sloshes it up her arm and dodges behind Yasha before she can knock his own askew.  _

There was a shop that he thinks he’s been to before. He nearly lets go of the cloak to check around his neck, realizing that a familiar weight has vanished. Outside the shop was a tall man with a bovine nose and long ears that hung down at the sides of his face. He looked to be sweeping the doorstep. Behind him, through the open doors, Molly spotted an identical figure setting something up on the very top of a shelf. 

_ He breaks into cackling laughter as Fjord chucks the sandback up and  _ up,  _ and it comes down to slam atop his skull. He slinks off and Molly skips up, turns around and tosses his own. He wins a strawberry, a fruit he’s only been treated to a handful of times, plucking them from the fields before the farmer’s daughter sics the dogs on them, and it’s thrice as sweet as any he’s had before. _

He stopped. 

The doors he stood before were familiar. Well into the city now, night had fallen. Molly had wandered until time slipped between his fingers as loose as the clouds overhead. The city streets were near empty. 

_ The Evening Nip,  _ read the sign, chipped wood and sun bleached paint. Molly stared at it for several long moments. Then his hooves carried him inside, despite his own reluctance.

Each step made him want to turn and flee. Something about the place made his skin crawl. It was a sound just behind his ear, rasping and like he’d heard it before, dreamed it before. 

_ Lucien,  _ she’d said. 

_ Lucien, Lucien.  _

The name had somehow sounded right in her mouth. The embrace had felt like he could sink into it, like he’d done so a hundred times before. 

“Hey, Buddy? There’s a bench down the road if you need a place to sleep.” 

The voice snapped him out of his haze. He was inside, Molly realized, and he’d been standing in the middle of the floor. His eyes found the bartender, a tired man with a red nose and a scruffy attempt at a beard. He plastered on a smile and dragged himself up to the bar, leaning low on it.

“Sorry, friend, got a bit distracted. It’s been a long time since I’ve come through here, got caught up in the good old days, you know how it is.” 

The bartender frowned at him. “Can’t say I do.” He looked like a Lernie in Molly’s eyes. 

Molly clicked his tongue. “Yeah, you wouldn’t, would you. Anyhow, mind letting me downstairs?”

Lernie cocked a brow. “Employees only… sir?” 

“Sure.” Molly shrugged. “I’d consider myself an employee. They took my blood and everything —“ He blinked, then barked a laugh. “ _ Wow _ we really did that, huh? Shit. But you know, I did fight a ghost for the Gentleman, who’s that blue sweaty fellow, just like you — that is to say the sweaty bit  _ not the blue  _ —“

He beamed as Lernie started flapping his hands, making a furious  _ shhhh’ _ ing sound. “Gods above, just give me the password next time!” He hissed, stumbling over to unlock and open a door. “You know what  _ subtle  _ means?”

“Look at me, Lernie, and answer that question yourself. But thank you.” Molly winked, and trotted down the steps. The moment the door shut, he sagged against the wall, heaving a breath. The fog in his head was heavy. He felt  _ slow,  _ and running his mouth had taken what little energy he had left. 

He slid along the wall as he descended, horns tapping against it when his head sagged too far to one side. There was a quiet murmur that came to greet him as he neared the end of the stairs. 

The room below was nearly empty. A single woman worked the bar, her tusks glinting in the lantern light. Empty tables stretched around him, one or two occupied by a sleeping figure with a half-empty glass for company. 

The only life in the room was a bright splash of color amid the gloom. The first figure to catch his eye was just because of the  _ height,  _ towering over the table, bright white and pastel pink all dressed up in jade. Then Molly noticed the one beside him: a blue tiefling, short and stout with curling horns like his own. 

Beside her was a man, built broader than seemed right to Molly’s mind: a half-orc with salt-and-pepper hair, small tusks creeping from below his lower lip. Across the table was another, brown hair tinged towards red, looking clean, almost healthy. A halfling stood in her chair beside him, colorful beads in her hair, glittering lines lacing up her cheek. 

There were two women beside her, one dressed up in loose garments, hair shaved at the sides and bound in a topknot. She tossed a staff lazily between her hands, leaning into  _ Yasha.  _

His breath caught. The sound was clear in a near-silent room, and mismatched eyes lifted to his. 

A glass slipped from her hand and shattered. 

Mollymauk was rooted to the floor, the sound of chairs scraping against wood and voices clogging the air —  _ Mollymauk — there’s no way — he’s right there!  _

The faces weren’t all the same, but the voices, he knew those. Heat burned at his eyes, the room going fuzzy and then tilting, and he realized a second too late it was  _ him  _ and not the rest of the world that tipped sideways. 

Arms caught him before he fell. He knew Yasha’s touch without even seeing her face, and when she pulled him against her chest he was already falling into her. He shook, gasping against her shirt, arms curled between their chests. She hunched low over him, clinging just as tight, her voice hushed and shaking as she whispered,  _ “I missed you.” _

Maybe once he’d felt he’d be alright with his life ending early. When you spent every day making the most of it, there wasn’t  _ time  _ to think about death. It would come for him when his guard was down, when his time was up. But if death came for him right now, Molly would spit every infernal curse into her pale and feathered face, bite and claw and scream until his throat was bloody because there were people to live  _ for.  _ He didn’t know why he loved them, why he’d painted them onto his cards, why there was a void in his chest where they were supposed to be, but he did. 

And he wanted to live for them.  _ With  _ them. They were going to do amazing and terrible things, had already done so much that he’d missed. He wouldn’t miss a single second more. 

Molly sobbed against Yasha, wishing he could hug back. She didn’t let go until they heard Jester’s voice, high and breaking, call,  _ “Molly!”  _

She threw her arms around him, Molly’s sob choking into laughter as she crushed him tight against her and spun him in a circle. “Hey, hey, Jes,” Molly wheezed, pressing at her until she set his hooves back on the ground. Her face was drenched with tears already, and his had to be much the same. “Careful, sweetheart, I’m delicate.”

Yasha’s hand landed on his shoulder, the weight grounding. He stepped into her side, letting her cloak him as the others swarmed his vision. The large man, the firbolg, he hung back, watched the rest with a confused sort of joy. It was the halfling who caught his eye.

“Um, hello, stranger,” she said, with a raspy voice he knew. “I have no  _ idea  _ why my friends are doing this, I’m  _ so  _ sorry. You really don’t look all that special.” 

A grin cracked his face as he hunkered down and flicked her in the forehead. “Why, Nott the Brave, you haven’t changed a bit.” 

Her humor broke, and she hugged him as well. “It’s Veth, now.  _ Again,  _ actually, I was never a goblin, I just died and a witch cursed me which may or may not also be your whole deal. Also I’m married, I have a son.” 

It was all blurted in a rush into his ear before she broke away, as Fjord took her place. Molly stared after her. 

He could take a lifetime and he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to leave someone as speechless as she’d just left him. 

Molly rose again, looking up into Fjord’s face. “I hope you haven’t got a new roommate already,” he teased, feeling his eyes squint with the size of his smile. The grief was fading. There wasn’t much point in dwelling in lost time, was there, when he had plenty ahead of him. 

“About that... “ Fjord said. Didn’t  _ drawl,  _ but fade, voice clipped and almost lilting. 

Molly reeled away from him, ears pinning back to the sound of Veth and Jester’s laughter. “Okay who the  _ hell.  _ Nott — Veth got a new body but you got fucking  _ possessed.”  _

Fjord frowned, staring past Mollymauk as Veth’s knees hit the floor, choking on her laughter. 

“It is actually still him,” Yasha murmured. “I was confused, too.” 

“This is my real voice,” Fjord sighed. “I decided to stop acting like someone else and — you know what? Here.  _ Eldritch Blast.”  _

The drawling tone returned and Molly breathed a sigh of relief, collapsing back into Yasha and folding the back of his hand over his eyes. “I was so frightened, I thought he was gone forever. Hey, how many of you people were just fucking lying about who you are?” He straightened up with a grin. “I’m  _ so  _ proud of you.” 

His gaze panned to Beau, who’d been hanging back throughout this scene. She frowned at him, at everyone surrounding him. Her arms were crossed, her posture stiff. 

Molly’s grin faded to a smirk. His heart wasn’t really in it. 

“That really you?” Beau asked, voice gruff. 

“Now  _ that’s  _ an existential question and a half. Who can say if we’re ever who we really think we —” 

“Yep, it’s him.” She tipped her head down, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

Molly rolled his eyes. “You know, I’d have thought  _ dying  _ to save your sorry ass would have earned me at least a…” He trailed off, mouth hanging ajar. “Wait. Are you  _ crying?”  _

_ “Shut up.  _ My eyes are sweating.  _ You’re  _ crying.”

“Yes I am,” he grinned, and then  _ “Ouch”  _ as she socked him in the shoulder hard enough to bring fresh tears to his eyes. His arm started going numb. 

As he rubbed his bicep, trying to work feeling back into the muscle, the last of them drifted forward. Molly whistled, saying,  _ “Wow.  _ You clean up nice, Mister Caleb. Is it still Caleb?” He’d never once believed that was the man’s true name. Though sometimes even a fake one could stick. 

“Yes,” Caleb nodded. “It is good to see you, Mister Mollymauk. If it is indeed Mollymauk.”

“That it is.” 

Caleb reached out, and for a single, wonderful moment, Molly thought the man had learned how to give out hugs. Then he patted Molly’s shoulder, a stiff  _ one-two  _ movement that had Molly’s composure breaking once again, hunching over as he gasped on his laughter. 

Around him, in the dingy underground bar, the others started joining in. Some with tears in their voices, some from sheer disbelief and absurdity, some sharing his humor. 

“Gods above. You all have barely changed. I hardly recognize you.” He smiled, making to wipe away some tears, the movement awkward with his cuffs on. 

The others began to notice them at last, a quiet falling over them.

“Hey, uh. M… Molly?” Beau hesitated on his name. “Care to explain  _ that?”  _

Some of the humor drained out of him. Veth took his hand, tugging him down again as she took out a lockpick and got to work. “It’s a pretty long story,” Molly sighed. “But can I just… sit down, first? I need a second to breathe.” 

“Actually, maybe this will help.” 

The big guy was speaking, looming over the rest. He brushed something glittering over his palm and reached out, waiting for Molly’s permission to set the hand on his shoulder. Immediately, warmth like sunlight on a cold day washed over his skin. The exhaustion weighing his bones let up, even the heaviness in his mind feeling lighter. 

_ “Huh.  _ Thanks, big guy,” Molly grinned. “That’s a real pick me up.”

“Can’t do it all the time, but you look like you’ve been through a lot. Caduceus. Clay. I’ve heard a lot about you. Most of it is, uh… confusing.” 

Molly guffawed as the cuffs clicked open. He pulled his hands free at once, giving Veth’s arm a grateful squeeze as he stood up to shake Caduceus’ hand. “Then it sounds like they told you all the right stories.” 

They drifted out of the bar, to a room and to a door and beyond that… to something spectacular. 

“Welcome to Widogast’s nine-sided —” 

“Welcome home!” Jester leaped on him, and this time Molly could hug her back and laugh as she danced him across the room. “You can fly here!” 

It was a lot of noise, everyone speaking over one another, a dozen explanations he couldn’t hear as he just stared at them all and smiled so wide his face felt sore. Behind them, Caduceus smiled serenely back. 

Caleb cleared his throat, lifting a hand. “Ordinarily I make rooms for everyone. I will make one for you as well of course, Mister Mollymauk. But I thought, tonight, perhaps it would be best if we have a, ah… sleep over.”

He lead them into another room with seven beds and a hammock in a circle, each one looking customized to its owner. Molly found his in a gaudy display of reds and purples, too many pillows and quilts and a tapestry to the Platinum Dragon laid out at the foot of it. 

They didn’t get in their beds immediately. Jester and Yasha sat on his, and the rest crowded around, staying close. And if most of them drifted off like that, crammed into too few beds and too little space… it felt good. It felt right. 

Things weren’t okay yet, but for the first time since he’d woken in his grave, Mollymauk felt whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of A Bird in the Hand. I'm going to be posting one more chapter once I've began the next installment: Movement of the Heavens. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for sticking with the story! I hope you'll stay with me into the next series, to see what happens to Essek and... how relationships with the Nein will develop! 
> 
> Please let me know what you think! As usual, your comments are what keep me dedicated to writing. I hope I'll see you all later! And in the meantime: Happy New Year!


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